Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Community Cadets

Mr. John Lee: I beg to move,
That this House, conscious of the rise in juvenile crime, believes that consideration should be given to the creation of community cadets to assist both the police and the voluntary sector, primarily in a community and preventive role.
I am sure that the House shares with the vast majority of people a deep concern about crime levels in the United Kingdom. Statistics recently announced point to a significant rise in street crimes and burglary, especially in the inner cities. It is depressing when one reads comments such as those of a South London police chief superintendent:
Everyone must now face up to the fact that the police have run out of ideas on how to solve these massive crime increases. We no longer have solutions.
What must cause us all considerable heart searching, especially those who are interested in young people, is the extent of increasing juvenile crime in the 10 to 16 age group. Statistics show that over 30 per cent. of crime is committed by that category. In my county of Lancashire, detected juvenile crime rose from 28 per cent. of all detected crime in 1979 to 34 per cent. in 1980. Those are horrifying figures which bode ill for the future cohesion and stability of Britain. It is surely beholden on our generation, especially those of us in Parliament who have the responsibility for stewarding the nation's affairs, to come up with new solutions. To a great extent, the buck stops with us.
The purpose of my motion is to offer a constructive suggestion to a seemingly intractable problem. Community cadets will be no panacea but they may make a contribution. It is common ground that in recent years an increasing divide has developed between the police and young people. It is even more pronounced between the police and young members of the ethnic minority communities. It serves no useful purpose to dwell too much on past mistakes, especially the reduction of policemen on the beat and the increase in panda policemen. Happily, that approach has been reversed and community policing is back in vogue. We must police by consent in a democracy and it is vital that society puts out the hand of friendship to our disaffected and increasingly alienated young people.
I suggest that the more youngsters that we can enlist, in a metaphorical sense, on the side of law enforcement both formally and informally, the greater will be society's gain. The idea of involving young people with the police is not new. We are all aware of police cadets used as a recruiting ground for the senior force. That is full-time paid work that has played a useful role in the past.

However, of late, with police forces being almost up to strength and with few recruiting problems, the need for full-time police cadets has diminished.
It is perhaps not so widely known that a small number of police forces have for some time operated volunteer cadet corps. Sussex and Gloucestershire were the first forces to adopt them in 1967, with Cleveland and Northumbria now participating. The precise approach varies from force to force, but the common characteristics are that the age range is usually from 15 to 18 years and uniforms are identical to the regular cadets except that the shoulder flash has the words "volunteer cadet". There is a steady flow of applicants with little need to advertise. Volunteers are required to have a good general build and to be reasonably fit. They should be of good standing and conduct and school recommendations are important. The units are administered on a county basis by a volunteer cadet committee of regular officers.
The units are self-financing with subscriptions of lop collected from cadets. Station facilities and regular cadet equipment are used whenever and wherever possible. Activities of the volunteer cadets include orienteering, sailing, rock climbing, talks on aspects of the police service, first aid, the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme and sometimes target shooting. The choice is to some extent dependent on the skills and interests of the unit leaders, with the general emphasis on good citizenship and an understanding of the police. Participation in local charities and voluntary community service is actively encouraged. Cadets may also assist in special circumstances such as searches, but I understand that they do not accompany regular officers in operational patrol duties.
The objectives of the volunteer cadets are perhaps best summed up by those of the Northumbria force—to create a firm and viable link between the force and young people who are interested in the police service, and to involve young people with the police service to make them aware of the role of the police in society and to give them an opportunity to broaden their horizons. In total, there appear at present to be several hundred volunteer cadets in those four forces.
My suggestion for community cadets would not be too dissimilar from volunteer cadets. I am thinking of young men and women between the ages of 16 and 21 with uniforms provided free—at a probable cost of between £40 and £100—on a voluntary, part-time basis, although I would not be against a small honorarium perhaps on the lines of the Territorial Army. They would be under the control of, say, a community cadet liaison committee made up of the police and community leaders but operating from a police station base.
I turn to the type of activity that I envisage for community cadets. After an initial period of training, I should like to see them mixing and participating with other youngsters, going back into schools—perhaps those at which they themselves were educated—participating in youth club activities, joining in sports competitions and weekend camps and organising and leading them. I should also like to see them in a role more visible to the wider community. They could perhaps do a limited amount of patrolling in parks where vandals have been active or near old people's homes or council estates where youngsters have been making a nuisance of themselves. They might try to get closer to young people who participate in undesirable activities such as glue sniffing to try to discourage them and wean them away from such activities.
They could encourage greater proficiency and care by motor cyclists. From time to time, they might support local community policemen. I gather that in Wembley recently sixth-formers were taken out on the beat with a community policeman. Community cadets might also be seen at bus stations and on the tube.
I make it absolutely clear that it would not be my intention to involve these youngsters at the sharp end of policing or to bring them into confrontation with adult criminals. I do not wish them to have additional powers of arrest over and above the normal power of citizen's arrest that we all have, but I envisage them liaising with and communicating information to the police. Looking out for stolen car numbers might be a possibility.
I believe that if a community cadet force were created there would be no shortage of volunteers. Young people today are continually looking for opportunities and challenges, particularly at this time of high youth unemployment. Naturally, careful vetting would be needed. No one would wish to encourage the politically extreme to participate and we must be careful in that respect. I would certainly not exclude, however, those who may have committed minor misdemeanours in the past. Indeed, they may be the kind of young people who would benefit most.
I see my scheme as a means of bridging the divide that I have mentioned between young people and the police. The National Youth Bureau, of which I am chairman, said in its evidence to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure:
We recommend that training for all ranks in the police force should be examined to ascertain the relevance of the content appertaining to young people and should be extended where appropriate…We believe that a number of steps need to be taken, in conjunction with other agencies, to improve relations between the police and the local community, especially its young people.

Mr. Tony Marlow: How much time would be involved in the cadetship? Would it be a part-time, full-time or evening activity? Will there be an element of probation between joining the force and becoming an established member of it? Will there be a rank structure? No doubt my hon. Friend will come to these matters. If so, perhaps he will pass them by now and return to them later.

Mr. Lee: A probationary period is an interesting idea. Young cadets could perhaps be taken on for an initial period of two or three months. With regard to the time commitment, I think that the scheme would operate best on a part-time rather than a full-time basis. Youngsters might give up two or three afternoons per week, perhaps two or three evenings per week and one or two days at weekends to play their part, but I do not wish to be over-rigid in this respect.
I turn to the relationship between the police and the ethnic minority communities. We all accept that, despite the acknowledged efforts of the police and of the Home Office, the level of coloured recruitment to the police has been derisory. In reply to questions that I put to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in May 1980 and April 1981, I was told that in February 1980 and February 1981 membership of the force from the ethnic minority communities was 268 and 297 respectively, or just over 0·2 per cent. of the total force. By 1982, only very limited

further progress had been made, reaching a figure of 343, or 0·28 per cent., of whom 141 are in the Metropolitan force.
Lord Scarman in his report talked of the need for greater recruitment from coloured minority communities. In his summary of findings, part V, page 128, on the question of recruitment, he said:
Vigorous efforts are required to recruit more black people into the police…Other ways of involving black people into the police—such as the cadet scheme and the Special Constabulary must also be considered.
It is my submission that second and third generation members of the minority communities would be much more likely initially to participate as community cadets, perhaps as a half-way house to ultimately joining the main force or at least accepting and understanding it.
In the course of my researches, I have looked overseas to see what other countries are doing. An article in The Guardian in September last year talked of proposals by South Africa, which I accept may not be the best example, to establish a junior police reserve force, open to boys of 16 and over, with limited powers of arrest.
A more interesting scheme involving "Red Caps" on New York subways was started four years ago on Manhattan island. This involves red-bereted young people, aged 18 to 22, predominantly black, organised into groups who travel the underground keeping the peace. Apparently, and understandably, at first there was considerable opposition from the police, but they are now becoming accepted and it is acknowledged that they have had a significant effect on reducing the level of late night crime in New York.
Closer to home, I read in The Times on Tuesday that in Belgium schoolchildren are being encouraged to adopt a phone box to stop it from being vandalised. Apparently, this is also being done by one of the Welsh forces in the United Kingdom.
I shall now try to play Devil's advocate and anticipate possible doubts and criticisms of the community cadet concept. There will be those who say that decisions must be left to individual local and police authorities. That is certainly true, but I hope that the House and the Home Office can give a lead. There are those who will say that the money resources would be better employed on the main force itself. I cannot accept that it is an "either/or" question. In 1981–82—the Minister may have more up-to-date figures—Home Office spending on the police totalled about £1,640 million at 1979 prices. The extra cost of the community cadet operation would be minute—hardly even petty cash—in relation to that total.
With police forces up to strength nationally in almost every area and hardly any recruiting problems, it may be asked why we need any form of cadets. I emphasise that I do not regard potential recruitment to the main force as the prime or even a secondary aim of my community cadet concept. It would be a purely peripheral benefit.
Some may say that the organisation, direction and support required from police officers would distract them from their real work and that pressures on police time and manpower are bad enough without imposing any additional burdens. That is certainly an argument to be considered, but in view of the seeming inability of the police to control juvenile crime I suggest that the pluses of a community cadet corps would outweigh the minuses in this respect.
Criticism might be levelled on the basis that youngsters would effectively become spies or informers on their own generation and might even be physically abused. Apart from the occasional isolated case, that would be an emotive and exaggerated reaction. The majority of us do not regard police or traffic wardens in that light, and in performing their duties they are certainly not shunned or ostracised by the public or by their friends and neighbours.
A potential criticism that I considered carefully relates to the wearing of uniform. I accept the argument that it might be easier for the cadets to fraternise with and be accepted by young people if they did not wear uniform, but against that I feel that the extra status and authority which emanate from the wearing of uniform, coupled with the increasing reassurance which the sight of a uniformed cadet would give to the wider community, especially the elderly, more than makes up for that. On balance, therefore, I come down on the side of a uniform.
It would have been easy this morning to allow myself to be sidetracked and to have gone deeper into the reasons for juvenile criminality—whether youth unemployment, lack of discipline at home or at school, the influence of television, or a combination of all those factors. However, I resisted that temptation. I have not attempted to dot every "i" and cross every "t." I look forward to the contributions of other right hon. and hon. Members.
I am trying to project the concept of inviting young people, a generation of whom we should all be proud and of whom the vast majority are law abiding, to join in partnership with the wider community, working with the police and voluntary agencies to help to prevent and deter the criminality of a minority. I emphasise again that I do not see a cadet operation primarily as a recruiting ground for the senior force, but I hope that the police would view it as an adjunct to their operations. I cannot believe that it would overburden the authorities. Indeed, I like to think that they would welcome it.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: Before my hon. Friend reaches his conclusion, I should like to put to him one important matter. Would the community cadet force, like the Terriers, be something that the Government, through the Home Secretary, would ensure was set up? There are suggestions for a totally voluntary cadet force in different areas. Does he feel that it should be set up by the Home Office, county by county, as in the case of the TA? Does he further envisage that there should be a separate budget to provide for the training of the cadet force, so that there would be a Home Office budget for that purpose? Lastly, does he believe that, as in the case of the TA, those who join should do so for a definable time—say, 12 months or 2 years—to ensure continuity?

Mr. Lee: I thank my hon. and learned Friend. I was coming to the end of my speech. Let me answer his questions. I should like the Home Office to give more than a positive lead in this respect and endeavour to set up something on a national basis—in the nicest way, almost over and above local police authorities. A national lead is needed because of the national seriousness of the problem.
In answer to what my hon. and learned Friend said about the budget, I emphasise that the total cost of the scheme would be minute—indeed, peripheral. However, if cost is raised as an objection by local police authorities and county councils, I hope that the Home Office would

persuade the Treasury to provide small additional funds for what I believe would be an extremely important contribution to reducing overall crime.
In some respects it would be necessary to go along with what my hon. and learned Friend said about the time. There should be a minimum period. However, I do not want to tie down youngsters. There would be nothing worse than forcing youngsters who joined on a voluntary basis and who were fairly young to complete a certain period because they had signed a form in their initial enthusiasm. That would probably be a mistake. I should not want to go too far in that regard.
As I was saying, the police themselves must be as worried as we were about juvenile crime. I hope that the Minister will give my cadet scheme serious consideration, and I sincerely believe that it would be practicable, cost-effective, attractive to young people and reassuring to an increasingly concerned population.

Dr. Shirley Summerskill: I share the concern of the hon. Member for Nelson and Come (Mr. Lee) in moving the motion, particularly as his aim is to tackle the terrible problem of juvenile crime, about which we have heard a great deal this week, both on the Floor of the House and in the Committee considering the Criminal Justice Bill, of which I am a member. The more that we can discuss the problem and try to find a solution, the better.
We agree that there is a serious problem and that we must tackle it, and I am sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman's motives, which clearly are well intentioned, but there are many questions to be answered about the way in which he wishes to deal with the problem.
We are faced with the twin problems affecting young people of massive unemployment and rising crime figures, particularly for robbery, burglary and theft. The hon. Gentleman gave statistics about the types of offenders and the characteristics of young offenders. The evidence shows that most young offenders are male, and that the most likely age for offending is between 14 and 17. A particularly worrying figure is that the under-21-year-olds make up about 30 per cent. of the sentenced population in our penal establishments.
During this week many reasons have been giver, for why young people turn to crime. Explanations have been given about why they feel alienated and why many of them feel that crime provides a way of bringing them to the notice of authority. They complain that they have lost their identity. I do not believe that unemployment is the main cause, but it is certainly a contributory factor. Obviously we have to consider the role of parents—or the lack of the role of parents—

Mr. Rees-Davies: I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady, but I do not believe that unemployment is the cause of any crime. The reason is that, at a time when a person is not occupied with a job during the day, there appears to be no way of ensuring that he has other sporting and recreational activities. Is it not true that the community cadet scheme would fulfil that role?

Dr. Summerskill: I agree with the first part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's intervention that it is due not to unemployment, but to a lack of occupation. It would help if young people were occupied, instead of wandering


round the streets with nothing to do. I shall come to the need to provide leisure facilities or facilities of some kind for young people. The community cadet scheme would not necessarily give young people an occupation during the day. The hon. and learned Gentleman has raised a different point.
If the police are to operate effectively, they need to do two things: first, they must act as a deterrent to crime, and the greatest deterrent to crime is the fear of being caught and punished; secondly, they must find those who are guilty of crimes and see that they are brought to justice. To achieve those objectives the police need the positive support and co-operation of the public, and especially of young people. As has been said, we must try to get rid of any alienation that may exist between young people and the police in order to achieve a greater degree of understanding and to create links between them. In that way they can coexist within the community and feel that they are on the same side.
How we break down the alienation—which is often created by ignorance or prejudice, or both—is the problem which I think the hon. Gentleman is trying to tackle. He feels that community cadets will bridge the gap. The vast majority of young people are not law breakers and never will be. They can be a positive influence for good upon the minority who have committed criminal offences or who may do so.
As well as bridging the gap, we must use young people in the prevention of crime by ensuring that they have a public conscience about crime—that applies to adults as well—and by encouraging them to report crimes, which the police are always asking people to do. At the same time, we must encourage them to show the police that they have their co-operation. Policing by consent was rightly emphasised by the hon. Gentleman.
The proposals that we are discussing concern 16 to 21-year-olds. The motion says that they will
assist both the police and the voluntary sector".
I should have thought that the best way to do that was to set up a body—if a body is to be set up—which is not directly associated with either. From what the hon. Gentleman said, it would appear that his community cadets have quite strong links with the police, although they are not of the police. He did not so much emphasise the links, if any, with the voluntary sector. Therefore, it seems to me that they will be identified in the public mind and in practice with the police. The hon. Gentleman said that the cadets would operate from a police station base, and presumably their activities would have to be supervised by the police.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned a whole range of activities in which the cadets would be involved. I cannot see how they would differ from the existing volunteer police cadets, who, he says, already exist in four areas. He said that such cadets would ultimately encourage young people to join the main force.

Mr. Lee: With respect, I sought to emphasise the fact that I did not see the creation of a community cadet corps primarily as a means of recruiting into the main force, or even as a secondary means. I think that I said that I regard that as a possible peripheral benefit. It may have a slightly greater application among minority communities. There is a certain potential recruiting-plus there. However, for the

majority of the community, I tried to make the point that the recruitment aspect would be very much down the list of priorities.

Dr. Summerskill: I take the hon. Gentleman's point.
I still do not see the real distinction between volunteer police cadets and the community cadets that the hon. Gentleman is proposing. I should like to place more emphasis on the voluntary organisation aspect of the motion, which was not emphasised so much by the hon. Gentleman. Voluntary organisations and the police, each in their own and different ways, can play a community and preventive role in tackling juvenile crime.
We have been told that the Home Office would not have to provide much money for the scheme. However, as Government finance is so hard to come by I should prefer to see the scarce resources that they have being given to the police, to police cadets, to existing volunteer police cadets, and to voluntary organisations. They can all influence-young people very strongly in their different ways to reject crime and to respect the forces of law and order. They can exert an influence to channel the energy and enthusiasm of many young people into undertaking either voluntary activity within a voluntary organisation, or to join the volunteer police cadets if they are in their area, or the police cadets, or, at the age of 18½, the special constabulary.
The hon. Gentleman's motion refers to 16 to 21-yearolds. It is worth mentioning that at the age of 18½ there is the special constabulary for those who want to be part-time policemen. It had its 150th anniversary last year. I regret that the number of officers in it is falling, but it seems to be an ideal way to introduce more police on to the beat within the community. They will be policemen whom the local residents and young people will know.
Very young special constables would be an asset to liaison between the full-time police force and the young people in a community. Perhaps the Government could consider lowering the recruitment age to 18, or even below that, in order to recruit more special constables with the emphasis on young people. The retirement age has been lowered, and it would be appropriate to lower the age at the other end.
I know that the hon. Member for Thanet, East (Mr. Aitken) feels strongly about the special constabulary and has often spoken on the matter in the House. It embodies the spirit of voluntary service and therefore provides a link between voluntary service and the police.
The special constabulary has the advantage of not being a national force. It is based on individual police forces and people are recruited locally. Increased liaison between the police authorities and the police is something about which Labour Members have said a great deal during the last week. We think that there should be greater accountability by the police to police authorities. Police authorities can also serve to link the police with voluntary organisations in the community. Many of them are local councillors who have links with voluntary organisations.
We want to see the police visiting schools, youth clubs and colleges of further education, where they will have direct links with young people.

Mr. Nicholas Lyell: Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the gravest causes of juvenile crime is the high truancy rate, particularly among young teenagers? Does she see an increasing role for the


police—and perhaps other people, such as educational welfare officers—in seeking to cut down truancy? That should have a significant effect on the amount of juvenile crime.

Dr. Summerskill: I should have thought that parents were primarily concerned with truancy. I think that their role is often underestimated in preventing it. I am not sure that the police should spend their time looking for children who have not gone to school. As far as I know, the child does not commit a criminal offence by playing truant. Perhaps it is thought that cadets could roam the streets looking for truant children but we should be concerned with those children only if they commit street crimes. I accept that many juvenile criminals play truant from school.

Mr. Lyell: The hon. Lady probably knows that the Metropolitan Police carried out a truancy sweep in one area, which resulted in a drop in crime in that area of no less than 36 per cent.

Dr. Summerskill: I agree that the emphasis should be placed on tackling juvenile crime. It so happens that those involved in such crimes are often those who play truant.
Many police forces are becoming actively involved in the community. In my constituency the police visit schools, youth clubs and colleges and mix with the young socially in their normal activities. That can create only good will between the two groups. The Minister may be aware that in areas such as Exeter, Handsworth, part of Liverpool and Grimsby, the local police have made particular efforts to enter into the normal leisure activities of the young. If the Home Office decides to provide more financial or manpower resources to tackle juvenile crime, it should be channelled into the Voluntary Services Unit of the Home Office to support and stimulate voluntary effort.
At present, more than £3 million is available for grants to voluntary organisations that are active in the community. The National Council for Voluntary Youth Service and the National Association of Youth Clubs are the two specific national organisations involved with the young. They are the two main umbrella organisations for voluntary agencies providing youth services. Once or twice a year the Minister is presented with a list of organisations that would like some money from the Voluntary Services Unit. He has to weigh one against the other, and that is a difficult task, because they all seem deserving. However, this debate will serve to remind him of the problems of juvenile crime and of the part that those organisations can play in combating it.
The National Council for Voluntary Youth Service and the National Association of Youth Clubs were asked about the most appropriate ways in which the Government could finance an extension of constructive youth activities. Their reply was that the Government could usefully finance people employed at a regional and local level and charged with the responsibility of setting up voluntarily managed youth services and helping to improve and co-ordinate existing services. They say that a precedent for that is the scouts' field commissioners, who cover two or three counties and who are paid for by the Department of Education and Science. The National Council for Voluntary Youth Service considers that it would be valuable if other national and local youth organisations had such employees financed by the Government, with a view

to stimulating appropriate forms of youth work If the Home Office has not received a request for funds for that purpose, it will no doubt do so in due course.
The hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West mentioned youth clubs and leisure facilities. I accept that if we must have vast numbers of young people unemployed, it is better that they should do something rather than do nothing. However, we are up against local authority cuts. I shall not become too party political, but in my constituency the amenities and recreation department, and all the other departments, have suffered severe cuts. Therefore, we must look to the voluntary organisations, in the hope that they can provide the facilities which the rate support grant can no longer adequately supply.
If we are to tackle the problem, everyone must be involved, including parents, teachers, youth club leaders, voluntary organisations, volunteer police cadets. police cadets, the special constabulary and the police. I am reluctant to add yet another body. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne seemed to suggest that there should be an extra element, but if all those bodies worked together and tried to exercise their influence over the young whenever they met them they could put across an effective message.
I am not certain that the idea put forward by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne is very different in character from that of the existing volunteer police cadets. Although they exist in only a few areas, they could be extended to others. I shall be interested to hear whether the Minister agrees with that assessment.

Mr. Nicholas Lyell: I am glad to have an opportunity to take part in the debate and. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) on initiating it. He has put forward the idea of creating cadres of young people to assist the police. That is a sensible idea that deserves to be pursued. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will consider it sympathetically.
I should like to widen that concept and to explore its implications not only for policing but for other community aspects, particularly education, which ties in closely with the problems of truancy in juvenile crime. First, I should like to consider the wider spectrum. The hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) rightly raised the problems of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. Those problems are in the minds of all hon. Members, whatever parties they may represent. Happily, unemployment has fallen to just under 3 million. However, any sensible hon. Member, irrespective of party, would realise that for deep and fundamental reasons, which have nothing to do with the Government's wise policies, the figure is unlikely to fall in the near future. In the medium term, unemployment will remain substantial as we gradually pull ourselves round.
I have done some research. My figures relate to July 1981, when there were 2,850,000 out of work. Those under the age of 24 accounted for 1,116,000 of the total. Those under the age of 19 accounted for 638,000. Going back to the period under this Government and under 'he previous Government when the number of unemployed was 1·5 million, one finds that the number out of work under the age of 24 was still a formidable 550,000. I take an intermediate date when there were 2·5 million


Unemployed—a figure to which all hon. Members would like to see us gradually pull back. At that time, there were 920,000 people under the age of 24 out of work.
Between 800,000 and 900,000 young people a year are now reaching the age of 18. Throughout this decade, more than 800,000 young people each year will reach the age of 18. All are likely to be faced with a significant problem of unemployment. The situation is not unique to this country. It is seen increasingly in other countries in Europe where the unemployment rate is rising faster than ours. We have to ask ourselves seriously how the problem should be tackled. The principal reason for high unemployment in this country and, indeed, in other countries is that goods and services are not produced at a price that can be afforded by the world at large. We are, in a sense, paying ourselves too much and producing too little. To make the transition back to working for our living at a rate that the world can pay us is difficult.
There are two possible routes. One is somehow to enforce upon ourselves the view that all of us, at every age, but particularly young people, must accept much lower rates of pay. The other—this is what I want to explore—is to re-adopt and revitalise the concept of service to the community. I am not talking about National Service in the old sense, and I hope that I shall not be interpreted by the newspapers as doing so. Since the ending of National Service in 1960—it was finally phased out in 1962—there has been no form of service to the community. That makes us unique in Europe, with the exception of Eire, which has followed our example. Every other country in Western Europe has some form of service to the community in quasi-military defence—home defence, civil defence and wider fields. We should now begin to explore seriously the idea of instituting a broad system of national and community service with a home and defence option.
This subject produced an interesting study a couple of years ago in the London School of Economics by an academic called Enrico Collombato working under the direction of Professor Ralf Dahrendorf. He worked out a scheme whereby all young people, girls as well as young men—I know that the hon. Member for Halifax will be glad to hear me say that—would find an opportunity to serve their community. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne has referred to the concept particularly in the context of policing. That is imaginative and helpful. But opportunities also arise in education, health, child care, care of the elderly and in conservation within the city and the environment generally. Mr. Collombato identifies in his study between 600,000 and 1·4 million jobs a year that could be helpfully done in these civilian spheres. After initial training young people would have the opportunity to work directly with professionals.
Even though today is Friday, there is no opportunity and it would not be right for me to elaborate on all these individual schemes. I should, however, like to illustrate what could happen in education. It ties in closely with the community cadet policing idea of my hon. Friend. I wish to mention also the importance of the opportunity for a home defence and civil defence option. When hon. embers mention this topic, other than on a Friday—the Opposition Benches today, with the worthy exception of the hon. Lady, are empty—they tend to be shouted at as if they were militarists or Fascists. I am not, happily, faced

with that direct confrontation today. If such shouts had been directed at me, I would have replied that in every other country in Europe this kind of service is being provided by young people.
No one would describe Austria, Norway, Sweden, Finland or Denmark as militarist countries, but all have what they avowedly call a concept of total defence. This means that every person in the community is involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in the potential defence of the country. All young men, and in Sweden all young women, are trained to play a part in the event that their country might ever be attacked. I am talking about a wholly defensive concept. In consequence, in the event of anything like that happening or being threatened—God forbid that it should—all the people know the role they would play and what they would have to do.
I have the highest praise for our Armed Forces. It is serious that our community is almost entirely uninvolved. In saying that, I have the backing, I know, of no less a person than Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Neil Cameron, who made this point specifically in his impressive lecture to the Royal Society of Arts as long ago as April 1980. It is extremely important—I say this seriously to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), who will be listening on behalf of his fellow Minister of State, the hon. and learned Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Mayhew)—to emphasise the need for everyone in the country to understand that, if there were an emergency, they would have a part to play and what that part should be.
I strongly support the independent nuclear deterrent. However, the concept of a great defensive engine lurking in some distant ocean being adequately able to defend a nation which is wholly unprepared psychologically has one or two flaws. Therefore, it is important that the whole nation should be involved in its defence and have a part to play in an emergency. That brings me back to the concept of service, how it might be implemented and the interesting initiative in my hon. Friend's motion.
I have outlined a number of aspects in which such work could be done and I shall now concentrate on education, particularly in the context of policing. Yesterday's interesting debate on law and order was deliberately designed to concentrate on methods of policing and the relation between police and the community. It is not widely enough recognised how much of today's crime is committed by young people. I do not mean only the 50 per cent. of crime committed by people under 21 years of age. At least 25 per cent. of all crime in the metropolis is estimated to be committed—these figures are drawn from the convictions which are, of course, only the tip of the iceberg—by people under the age of 16. By definition, that means that crime is committed by those of school age. Burglaries in London last year—burglaries alone and London alone—numbered 75,000. Only 1 per cent. of those burglaries could be cleared up.
However, among the offenders apprehended by police—in that low-rate clear up—no less than 2,500 were children and young people, who ought to have been at school and who were playing truant. The unanswerable link is that large numbers of children are playing truant and that that has a close link with the level of juvenile crime.

Dr. Summerskill: Has the hon. and learned Gentleman any suggestions on how to stop truancy from schools?

Mr. Lyell: I have indeed, and I shall deal with that aspect shortly.
The overall truancy figures are 2·2 per cent., which sounds awfully little. However, one must remember that that is children aged 5 to 16. Truancy among the young is, of course, very low. Such young children do not wander off by themselves nearly as much as children of 12 or in their early teens, where the average truancy figure in some places is about 10 to 15 per cent. It is sad, but we all understand why, that among single-parent families it is not uncommon in many areas for children to be at school for only 50 per cent. of the year during days of attendance.
High truancy rates simply must be tackled because they undoubtedly reflect in the crime figures. The hon. Member for Halifax asked how we should tackle that problem. She knows from her experience in the Home Office of the beneficial intermediate treatment schemes carried out, still somewhat on an experimental basis. I particularly refer to those devised at the university of Lancaster under the aegis of Professor Norman Tutt and Mr. David Thorpe. However, the schemes have concentrated for short periods on ensuring, among other things, that young people remain at school. That simply illustrates that if one can direct the attention of a third party to the problem and deal with young persons individually they can be persuaded to go to school. That leads me to my hon. Friend's suggestion about community cadets.
The outgoing Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Sir David McNee, has, according to the newspapers, been urging the Government to give the police greater powers to round up children who play truant. Community cadets could play a significant role in that. It seems nonsense that, when it is compulsory for children to attend school, their non-attendance should not he an offence and that the matter should simply be left to the parent.
A child ought to know—children are well capable of understanding this from the age of 10 upwards—that it is wrong for them to play truant. There is no reason why they should not be brought before juvenile courts for doing so. It would make much more sense if, instead of their parents being brought alone before the courts, they could be made to appear as well. It is important that somebody should be out and rounding them up. The shorthand expression used is "truancy sweeps", which slightly discredits the notion. However, during police campaigns in particular London areas, large numbers of children were rounded up when wandering around and getting into mischief and were sent back to school, often to the astonishment of the schools which, in certain cases, had not seen the children for months. The amount of juvenile crime fell substantially during those campaigns. It is not just the negative approach of preventing juvenile crime. The positive point is that a child is sent back into school.
I recognise that this presents a problem for schools. These children are often the difficult ones. However, if we are serious about tackling the problems of juvenile crime—which leads into adult crime—we must tackle truancy much more vigorously. The police should be entitled to carry out truancy sweeps. My hon. Friend suggested that community cadets, particularly those who have left school, should help to ensure that children playing truant were brought back into school. That would have a beneficial effect, although it is negative in the sense that it stops things happening. However, it will bring children back into school.
The positive side is the way that other young people can help the education system. I know the importance of ancillary staff in schools in my constituency. Of course, they are substantially professionals. I do not wish to decry their professionalism in any way. However, because of economies, which are sad but necessary because Britain has been so grossly overspending for years, we have fewer ancillary staff and the schools notice that. However, in primary, nursery and to some extent secondary levels, young people who left school and were performing a year of service could be of real value to the educational system. They could help teachers on an individual basis. Of course, when more young people returned into schools as a result of the truancy sweep—tying these two aspects together—the staff would be available to provide more help on an individual basis. The two aspects would be mutually beneficial.
That brings me to another important matter that is before Parliament, although we have not heard so much of it for a month or two, as the idea is being worked out. The Government are to be greatly congratulated on their new training initiative for young people who are leaving school but not going on to further formal or higher education. Such a provision has been greatly lacking over a generation. It is something that other countries do better than we do, although my further studies show me that they do not do it as perfectly as we sometimes assume. I am thinking of West Germany. The experience that young people might gain, for example, in education could be made to tie in closely and sensibly with the Government's new training initiative for those who might go into education as part of their full-time career.
I have had the opportunity to explain in detail a number of matters that relate to my hon. Friend's motion and to take it a little wider. I hope that the Government will look seriously at the detail of his motion and ideas. I hope that the proposal will become a pilot scheme or at least a signal lamp for the direction in which we shall be moving more broadly.

Mr. Tony Marlow: I was very interested in the eloquent speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Lyell)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) on bringing the matter before the House. He, too, did so most eloquently. He brought before the House four of the most important political and social conundrums with which we are faced.
First, his proposals have ramifications for the dreadful problem of the great number of young people who are unemployed and for whom we are concerned to devise the most appropriate programmes and remedies. Secondly, in his projected ideas he provided a partial solution to the problem of the alienation between our young people in inner city areas and the police force. It is a growing problem which is causing grave concern.
Thirdly, my hon. Friend dealt with the problem of rising crime, about which we are all concerned. His proposals would go some way towards reversing the appalling crime figures. They would employ the good will and support of young people in bringing that about. Fourthly, by implication, if not directly, he touched on the potential problem of the fissures in our society where one


ethnic group divides from another, which could have grave consequences for the future. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, as the whole House should be.
I am delighted that the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) is with us to put the Labour Party's view. She did so sympathetically and effectively, although I do not agree with everything that she said.
I am a nice chap and should be happy to congratulate the right hon. Member for Glasgow, "Claret" on his victory last night, but in an important debate dealing with topics which have great implications for the future, and for which we should devise solutions and on which we should concentrate above all else, I am concerned that not one Member of the SDP or the Liberal Party is in the Chamber.
The House should take particular note of what my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne says because of his great experience. He is chairman of the National Youth Bureau. Last year I had the good fortune, with my hon. Friend, to visit the imaginative programmes being put forward and encouraged by the Manpower Services Commission. I know at first hand of his understanding of the issues.
An attitude has grown, like Topsy. For years our young people have expected to leave school and take up work. The probability was that they would take the first job that arose in their community or locality. Sadly, but in some eventual respects perhaps advantageously, that is not the case now. Particularly in inner city areas, the jobs are not there. Perforce, that is making us consider afresh, and almost from first principles, programmes for our young people to prepare them for the future.
I imagine that we can all remember what it was like to be 16, 17 or 18. It can be wonderful, but frightening and confusing. One feels grown up, but uncertain. One wishes to assert oneself, but may be nervous and unsure. One wants to do something, but does not know what. One wishes to get on with something, but does not have the experience to know what it should be.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment has set up the new youth training scheme and proposed to put the immense sum of £1,000 million into it. It will be money well spent. He is now devising a comprehensive, imaginative and radical scheme to provide a bridge from childhood to adolescence to prepare young people for their working and, I hope, social and total life.
Civil servants sometimes get the rough edge of hon. Members' tongues, as often as not unjustifiably. One civil servant, Geoffrey Holland, has performed miracles, with his staff, to devise exciting and challenging programmes for young people. I am excited over the fact that, with others, he is moving forward my right hon. Friend's scheme for young people.
The new youth training scheme must have variety. All young people are different. There are differences between various parts of the country. Some areas within their own resources can devise good youth training schemes, with good work experience and vocational training. Some young people will wish to take advantage of them, but others will be uncertain. Other areas may not have the resources and facilities to develop the better schemes.
My hon. Friend's proposal is excellent. Others will bring forward other proposals which may be every bit as excellent. We must promote and increase the range of

alternatives so that there is something with which every young person can identify and wish to do to give himself the relevant experience for his life.
I have put forward a scheme for voluntary national community service, but today we are debating my hon. Friend's scheme. There is one feature which could be common to both as we are moving forward with and developing schemes in this area. It is important to give young people three opportunities fairly quickly after they leave school. They should have the opportunity to go to another environment, away from home, and start to stand on their own feet with some residential experience. They should have the opportunity to prove themselves against tasks and projects and against the environment. They should have the opportunity to work with other groups of young people in a common cause and with a common endeavour to achieve common objectives.
As a precursor to my hon. Friend's scheme, and linked in with any other schemes that might be developed, I should like to see, under the new youth training scheme, the setting up of a number of residential centres where people embarking on the new youth opportunities training scheme could spend, say, the first three or four weeks doing a certain amount of outward bound training and some vocational training, working and living with people from different backgrounds, from different parts of the country and with different aspirations. That would enable them to begin at this very important formative stage of their lives to understand not just themselves but other people, the problems of society and the world into which they are about to move.
I have it in mind to take them away from their home environment—I say "take" but, of course, it should be voluntary; there is no question of forcing anyone to go away. Let them get away from their home environment so that they can look at it from outside. Let them meet people with different attitudes and problems. They can learn a great deal from mixing with people with different attitudes and problems. Let them work with people who perhaps have done nothing really positive in their lives. Let them get a sense of achievement. Even after only three or four weeks—and I hope that the period might be extended later—let them join other schemes that have been suggested, such as the one proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne. My hon. Friend will probably agree that three weeks on a mountain side or on our rivers and lakes would be an excellent start to the cadetship that he suggests.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend has put forward his imaginative proposal, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will do all that he can to see that it is implemented. As my hon. Friend said, the resources required are minimal. The benefits are magnificent, and the potential rewards are great. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Let people bring forward ideas. Let them all be linked into one great scheme so that young people coming on to the scheme can choose, get a variety of experiences, look round and decide what they want to do, understand the world, society and themselves before deciding the eventual jobs that they want to do. In that way they will have the background and the experience. They will be square pegs in square holes. They will be motivated, positive people. They will be the new generation of parents. They will be the new Britons. What an exciting future we can have.

Mr. Neil Thorne: I welcome this opportunity to discuss the country's youth. I have listened with great interest to the contributions made by hon. Members on both sides of the House. We agree that a scheme along the lines of that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) is to be welcomed.
There are already many opportunities for young people to get involved in community activities of one sort or another. The scouting movement has a long and distinguished history and was probably one of the first to involve young people in seeing what community life was about and to provide them with some basic discipline outside the school environment. The Boys' Brigade and the Jewish Lads and Girls Brigade have also had their role to play.
In more recent years, the Army, sea and air cadet forces have made major contributions, and they have provided the incentive to young people to join both the Territorial Army and the Regular Forces. The proposed home defence service will also help to bridge the gap, because it will provide an opportunity for those who are too young to enter the Territorial Army, as well as those who are too old, to make their contribution.
The Services generally do not get the credit which they deserve for their contribution to the education of the nation. Many people tend to look upon the defence budget as purely and simply a military contribution, whereas, as those of us who had the good fortune to participate in National Service know, there is an important educational role here. Very few people went through National Service without gaining enormous maturity and a great respect for their fellow human beings. It broadened their outlook considerably because they came in touch with people from different levels and walks of life whom they would not otherwise have had the opportunity to meet with the close contact that was provided in this way.
The Territorial Army has made a major contribution in this regard. Throughout my own experience and service, on a great many occasions I have been asked to take in young people who were in difficulty and involved with the probation service. When given the right environment, these young people responded magnificently and played a major role in the unit, as well as rehabilitating themselves as useful and valuable members of society. They faced up to the challenge offered them and grasped it with both hands.
It is important that we should explore every possible opportunity of involving young people. We know, for example, that the St. John Ambulance Brigade and the Salvation Army are anxious to encourage young people to get involved in their activities at an early age, because, if they were not entitled to enrol until they were 18 or more, many of these young people would have acquired other interests and would have been lost to those valuable causes. We cannot over-emphasise the magnificent role that both organisations play in our society not only in their contributions to the welfare of other people but also in character-forming among the young.
There are a number of other organisations, some of which—the Samaritans, for example—are for older people with experience who are able to give advice and guidance to people in difficulty when they need help and support. They are of great value in lightening the burden on

Members of Parliament now that people give less of their time to church activities, with the result that those in trouble do not have the advice and guidance that membership of such a community gives.
There is of course a multiplicity of sports clubs, and further opportunities are provided through the extremely useful Duke of Edinburgh award scheme for young people to give of their best and to make their contribution. However, there are still people who do not fall into any of these categories and who would welcome the opportunity to learn more about police work and perhaps even the fire brigade and civil defence. My hon. Friend's motion helps to fill that gap. It provides another option which is of major interest to many young people. We cannot afford to turn down any of these opportunities.
I should like to see set up an organisation on the lines proposed by my hon. Friend. It should be backed and supported nationally. I do not believe that the education authorities should shun such an arrangement. It has a positive contribution to make towards the education of the young. I think that the police would welcome the opportunity of getting at the hearts and minds of young people at an early date so that they can save themselves a lot of time and trouble later on. I am sure that the police would wholeheartedly welcome the opportunity that such a scheme would afford.
I believe that it should be a uniformed organisation. I would not, however, like to see any payment made, as that would detract from the other volunteer bodies which are already doing so much valuable work. The Army cadet force makes a contribution by way of uniform and instructors but involvement in the force does not carry any bounty or financial benefit. It is not until people are committed in a much wider sense and join the Territorial Army at 18 that they can look for some financial reimbursement.
It would also be wrong to offer such a scheme as is proposed on the basis that it was an alternative to a job. There is no alternative to being a properly and fully employed member of the community. However, the character formation that would be involved in, such a scheme would help young people to create the right attitude of mind and would be an additional factor in their favour, because employers take these matters into account when looking at a potential employee.
Many young people do not realise the importance that employers place on the character formation of young people. Employers are interested in what young people are involved in outside the hours of business activity. Those young people who are committed to membership of the Salvation Army and the St. John Ambulance Brigade tend, in my own experience, to be the ones who get the jobs that are available. They are much more likely to get them, because they show motivation, than are those who wander around doing little or nothing in their leisure hours.
Opportunities would be afforded for the acquisition of additional skills which in turn give young people confidence and, as some of my hon. Friends have said, help to develop the maturity that is so important for young people when they are trying to establish themselves within the community.
I welcome the opportunity to support the motion and I wish my hon. Friend every success in the promotion of the scheme.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: We are indeed indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) for tabling the motion. It is to be noted that when somebody turns to the purely constructive side and says what he wants to do about law and order and crime there is an empty House. On the other hand, there is always a packed House if anybody talks about the death penalty, about how the police should be strengthened, or about flogging.
Today's debate, which follows naturally from yesterday's debate, is dealing with only two aspects of the problem. The first is the rise in juvenile crime, which is the main part of my hon. Friend's thesis. The other aspect is the formation of a community cadet service. I shall deal first with the community cadet service and then with the problems of juvenile crime.
I have a certain amount of experience in this area. As long ago as 1966 I was the co-author, under the chairmanship of Peter Thorneycroft, of "Crime knows no boundaries", and, in 1970, of the Conservative pamphlet "The conquest of crime". I mention that because, when dealing with juvenile crime, I shall refer to one or two of the recommendations which, although adopted by the Conservative Party at the time, have never to this day been implemented. It is fairly well known that I have spent the whole of my professional life in defending or prosecuting criminals and in being generally associated with the problems of crime and criminals.
With regard to the question of community cadets, it is interesting to note what is said by the Kent probation officers:
It may not be widely known that throughout Kent each weekend over 500 people who might have gone to prison, borstal or detention centre are, under the supervision of the Probation Service, decorating village halls, working in hospitals, clearing land (or more recently snow), sawing logs for the elderly and various other useful tasks. This has been going on for the past eight years.
As a result of that work, among those 500 people there are practically no examples of trouble.
The essential question rising from the motion is: what are the best measures to take in order to secure the full-time or reasonable part-time occupation of those who are likely to get into trouble? Those who say—as many Labour Members have said—that unemployment causes crime talk complete and absolute nonsense. Unemployment has hever caused anything at all. One of the causes of juvenile crime is that young people are not provided with an occupation which takes up their leisure time and gives them an interest.
Practically all the modern movement of criminologists—away from the question of custodial sentences—depends on two features. The first is that the criminal must repay the fruits of his crime. The second is that in doing so he should also make sure that he is fully occupied in his leisure time. If he is unemployed, he should make sure that he has something to do during the day as well as in the evening. Many of us in the House believe that it is infinitely better to give jobs to young people and to insist that they take them, under the threat of not receiving supplementary benefit if they refuse. Obviously it is better for them to have some occupation than none at all.
I hope that the guarantee of the Government that next year every young person will have the opportunity and

ability to maintain a job will be upheld. If it is, I am sure that we shall begin to see a fall in the level of juvenile crime.
Over 50 per cent.—precise figures are not kept by the Home Office—of all crime, including serious crime, is committed by those between the ages of 16 and 25. The serious aspect of the rising crime rate in recent times is that most of the offences are committed by young people breaking and entering. There is an immeasurable increase in that offence compared with the position 10 years ago.
How are we to deal with the problem? First, we must ensure that people make every effort to protect their own homes. Although many of us made the suggestion over 10 years ago, there is still not a firm Home Office or Government policy to ensure that people are given every encouragement to protect their own homes. Grants, or, at least, tax allowances, should be provided for the purchase of the necessary devices. That is part of the concept that the community will protect its own homes.
Many cases of breaking and entering are not planned by the young people who carry them out. How and why do they come about? The first reason is that many of those young people have nothing to do. Their leisure time is not enjoyable or pleasant and they get into trouble. They get caught easily, because they usually have no idea of how to get rid of the goods that they have stolen.
More sophisticated criminals have ways of getting rid of the goods that they steal and the detection and conviction rate for those criminals is not high. The greatest deterrent to any form of crime is detection and conviction.
Two questions arise in any consideration of juvenile crime: how can we marshal the forces of youth so that they can be fully occupied? How can we encourage the police to get a far greater understanding of youth and a more effective supervision and control over young people?
My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne suggests a community cadet force. I agree with the idea, but the problem is how such a corps should be set up. It is easy to say that it is a good idea, but there are many different ways of achieving it.
It would not be a good idea for the corps to be a police cadet force. I want it to be a community force. It should include men and women and boys and girls from the age of 16 onwards and should operate like the TA. Recruits should join for at least one year and the force should have camps in disused Army huts or other places where members could be trained.
The purpose of the force would not be only to combat crime. It could help the aged and do other necessary community projects. My fear is that members of the corps could be identified with the police. If they are thought of merely as young policemen they will not be trusted by the community.

Dr. Summerskill: The hon. and learned Gentleman has made an important point. The proposed force will be based at local police stations and its activities will, presumably, be supervised by the police.

Mr. Rees-Davies: That is the point that we must debate. The public are concerned about law and order and everyone is floundering around making suggestions. Many start by calling for the return of the death penalty. I remind the House, in passing, that in 1956 I initiated 38 debates on amendments in defence of the death penalty. They went on for hour after hour and I was fighting against Mr.
Sydney Silverman. We debated every conceivable aspect of the matter, but anyone who suggests that the death penalty is relevant to a reduction in serious crime is talking nonsense—and I speak as the most fervent hanger in the country. I should like to see a return of the death penalty, but it is certainly not relevant to this debate or to the increase in juvenile crime. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne is feeling his way on the arguments, as we all are. I am convinced that the cadet force must not be identified as a police force. I want to see in Toxteth, Kent and other parts of the country youth clubs, Scouts and other youth forces getting together in a cadet corps, which would be responsible in a civilian sense for many of the things that the TA does in a military sense.
One of the major problems of juvenile crime is the loss of community understanding. Let me give a recent example. A boy of about 17 or 18 threw a brick through the window of a house in a village. The brick just missed a baby and shot past his granny's head. The boy was arrested. The point is that he did not know the community. He lived in the town and not in the village that he was passing through. If he had known that there were a baby and a granny in that house he would not have thrown the brick.
A community cadet force should be set up locally by voluntary effort. That does not mean that the Home Office could not play an effective role. It can ensure that opportunities are provided for the setting up of local forces and that bases are provided. The force will need old Army huts or other places for its summer camps. It is crucial that young people should be able to get to know each other and the local community.
Members of the cadet force could look after the security of the aged and, subject to a probation officer being attached to a corps, young people who have engaged in crime and are under supervision orders could also join the force and mix with those who are unassociated with crime.
Many of those ideas and others are being suggested by the Home Office, probation officers and others. Many other ideas, including supervised activity orders, are being considered in our discussions on the Criminal Justice Bill. Those are all sound ideas and they are the right approach.
In recent years there has been a serious increase in juvenile crime. Unless action is taken it will increase further. What can we do to stop serious crimes, which include breaking and entering, mugging, robbery and vandalism? There is a public order aspect to vandalism and terrorism. Other serious crimes involve property.
The structure of the police force is not right for it to deal with the problem of serious crime. If we are to defeat serious crime, we must have the right structure for our police. There are two ways in which the problem can be dealt with, but having watch committees is not one of them.
There is nothing like sufficient integration between the work in each area and that of the Home Office. In 1966 Peter Thorneycroft and many others believed that a national strategy directed from the Home Office was needed. I see no reason to reform that view. If such an idea was pursued, we would have to alter the present structure of the police forces. The structure of local committees should be altered. We should set up new types of local committees so that each contains a Home Office representative and a police representative as well as local councillors.
More important than that, there should be central control of an overall strategy for criminal investigation. Years ago the detective force wanted a separate, national CID. Over and over again the Police Federation, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary and the chief constables have said that that would involve a separate corps d'élite of detectives with separate recruitment and that such a force would lose touch with the ordinary county forces. I do not share that view. I believe that the only way to meet serious crime by young people and others is to have a national strategy so that criminal investigation of serious crime is conducted on a national basis under the aegis of the Home Office.
That could not be done quickly and easily, but we could ensure a much closer liaison. A true story illustrates what I mean. On the day of the famous train robbery I was with Joe Jackson in his office at Scotland Yard. At 9 am the telephone rang. Jackson picked it up and went white in the face. He said "Good God. They have just got away with over £6 million." The person reporting the robbery was the chief constable of Hertfordshire. That was at 9 am. The crime occurred at 3.30 am. All hell was let loose and detectives came rushing in.
The idea of a national detective force was first mooted by Reggie Maudling when he was Home Secretary. He said that the chief constables were split on the issue. The Chief Inspector of Constabulary and the Police Federation were wholly against the idea, largely because it would create an elite. As the years went by, problems among the detective forces delayed consideration of the idea.
If we are to deal with serious juvenile crime, we must ensure that there is a totally new outlook by the committees. I do not advocate the Livingstone approach, but we must ensure that such committees are non-party political and that those serving on them have the assistance of the Home Office and others so that they receive the best advice. The committees should encourage the police in their work in the community.
In the last few months a policeman at Deal has been teaching football to youngsters on five evenings a week. He spends all his spare time doing that. His work is known widely, and of course he is popular. This got back to the chief superintendent, who sent for the young policeman. He thought that he was to be put on the mat. The chief superintendent told him "I hear that you teach in the evenings. I wish that you had told me, because I should like to give you some time off. There is no reason why you should do this work entirely in your own time." The police force is anxious to encourage our young policemen to mix with young people and to teach them. What could be better than for the police to engage in sporting activities with young people, many of whom might be able to give information and some of whom might even commit crimes themselves?
We should encourage the police to give time off to constables to engage in social and recreational activities with young people. That could create the change of attitude that is essential if we are to combat crime. Youth can fight crime by other young people. They are in the best position to understand. Young police officers should have the opportunity to mix and teach young people. In that way they will better understand young people's problems. They can create the togetherness—a horrible word—that youth will understand
Things are changing in crime as in other areas. Many of my constituents call for longer custodial sentences.
Heavy sentences are not what is needed for young people. We must ensure that their time is fully occupied. There is some new thinking. A person breaks and enters a home because he has heard that it would be empty, steals a few things, and is soon caught. That young person should be made to repay every penny.
That may take some time, and in the meantime we must ensure his absolute supervision. He must be found a job so that he can repay the victim, and he must also repay the community. We must ensure that there is a supervision order on him so that, instead of going out at the weekends, he must work for the community. Of course, the community work at the weekend can be partly recreational. That will be a much better method. We must also encourage more effective work by those who are serving custodial sentences.
The difficulty is that one can talk about the subject at great length. I have spoken for a little while, because we have an opportunity to do so this morning, as there is rather a paucity of Members in attendance. As the thinking goes ahead now, let us ensure that it is on firm foundations. The first foundation is the police force. To ensure that it is well organised for the task of upholding law and order will need a careful examination of local structures.
Secondly, we must consider using modern weapons in the fight against advanced crime. That means a national strategy for the CID. For example, we need a new sort of policeman in the fraud squad. Fraud cases now run for three or four months and there is a shortage of first-class accountants and of experts with a knowledge of how to combat fraud. The computer crimes of today and tomorrow will require highly skilled investigators. Not enough university graduates enter the force, because they do not wish to be a constable on the beat. They wish to go into criminal investigation. The sort of person who makes a good criminal investigator is different from the sort of guardsman who makes a good local constable on the beat.
We must also ensure that the police have every opportunity to get to know Britain's youth in every possible way. In doing that they can teach and speak to the community cadet corps. We must also ensure that there is every opportunity for youngsters to get together and to know the people in the local community, because in that way we can restrain the outbreaks of crime.
Many people would regard education as the most serious aspect. We must ensure that schools have more strict and better disciplinary control in many areas than they have today. That opens a further and separate subject, but it is an integral part of the causes of crime, because where parental control is effective very few young criminals come from those homes. I used to examine the crime figures, and I found that almost all of the young criminals aged from 16 to 19 years came from bad homes and from centres of crime. There are some black spots in London—I shall not name them—which have a solid bedrock of crime. Those are all areas where there is an absence of proper community and recreational control.
I hope that those matters can be taken into consideration by the Home Office as it pursues its path towards trying to control serious crime.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Timothy Raison): It has been said that today's debate is inevitably an epilogue to yesterday's debate. In a way, that is true, but the debate has been characterised by the best features of an epilogue. It has been quiet and remarkably thoughtful. I wish to pay tribute not only to my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Lee) for introducing the debate but to my other hon. Friends who have spoken. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) made a valuable contribution, based on his great experience of such matters. My hon. Friends the Members for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) and Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Lyell) have all raised many points upon which we should reflect. We have also heard from the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill).
When my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead was talking about the possible use of police cadets to pursue truants, I could not help wondering whether the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party might have employed police cadets this morning to pursue absent Members. It has been sad and slightly deplorable that, apart from the hon. Member for Halifax, to whom I pay tribute, the Opposition parties have been conspicuously absent.
We have had a worthwhile discussion and we are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne for giving us the opportunity to discuss how we can encourage greater community participation, especially by youngsters, in combating juvenile crime. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Thanet, West talked about using young people to deal with crime among young people, and there is no doubt that we must think about that very hard.
In his capacity as chairman of the National Youth Bureau, my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne is closely in touch with organisations and groups that are working with young people on training, on work experience, and in counselling the anxieties and uncertainties that have always affected young people and which are perhaps increased by the complexities of modern life. The House was interested in his proposals. I listened with great care to what he said and we shall certainly reflect carefully on his ideas. Everyone knows that we have become increasingly aware of the disturbing involvement of children and young people in crime. We know the statistics and the facts, about which we talked yesterday. We know how extensively young people feature in the crime figures. It was equally of concern that too many of those arrested during last summer's riots were aged between 10 and 20. Those are signals that we must all consider carefully.
The police are in the front line in the fight against crime, but they cannot go it alone. There must be a partnership with the community—with other agencies, voluntary groups and every law-abiding member of the public. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that the strategy which must be followed is to combine further enforcement of the law with a campaign to make a reality of community involvement in curbing crime. We have an old tradition of policing by consent in


Britain and for that tradition to be kept alive young people must be among those who give their consent and must work with the police rather than against them.
We must ensure that our young people grow up with a proper understanding of right and wrong and a sense of social responsibility. That begins in the home, and parents are in the key position of influence. One of the measures we have introduced in the Criminal Justice Bill will bring home to parents and guardians their responsibilities for children by strengthening and clarifying the existing law. When a child or young person is ordered to pay a fine or compensation, it must be paid by the parents unless the court is satisfied that would be unreasonable. This is part of a package of measures designed to strengthen and extend the courts' powers to deal with young offenders.
The Bill will strengthen supervision orders, extend community service down to 16-year-olds, and permit very short custodial sentences with a minimum of three weeks. Adequate powers for the courts to deal with young offenders will certainly be welcomed, but we would all agree that it is even more important to divert youngsters from the first steps on the path to a life of crime.
My hon. Friend has drawn special attention to the concepts of volunteer cadet schemes and the contribution that they can make to preventing juvenile crime. My hon. Friend talked about a national scheme of community cadets, and the hon. Member for Halifax asked how different his scheme was from the existing volunteer cadet schemes. I suppose that in a sense that is a question for my hon. Friend rather than for me. If he has another opportunity to speak at the end of the debate, he may develop that. We all know that there are similarities. My hon. Friend is anxious to extend the scale and to develop this in new ways, but, as I understand it, what he has in mind is fairly similar in many ways to the volunteer cadet schemes which already exist, particularly in the three forces of Gloucestershire, Northumbria and Sussex, the last-named having been on the go since 1967. Those schemes aim to provide boys and girls aged 15 to 18—a slightly different age range from that envisaged by my hon. Friend—with an outlet for their energy in a forum where they will learn good citizenship, and to create a firm and viable link between the police and young people in a way which will give these youngsters a better understanding of the role of the police and an opportunity to broaden their horizons. Some of the youngsters have committed minor offences or have personality problems. They develop a more positive outlook and gain in self-confidence as volunteer cadets.
Two of the schemes put the youngsters in uniform. In the other, they are more informally dressed, in jeans and tee shirts—with a special badge. Sometimes I think that jeans and tee shirts have become a modern uniform, but that is another matter.
There are weekly training sessions, which may include drill, first-aid and life-saving instruction. They also have talks on police topics and other issues of interest to young people. The youngsters are encouraged to become involved in service to the local community, such as helping in hospitals or homes for the handicapped, or raising money for charity through sponsored walks and the like. They have a good deal of fun, too, with sporting activities, expeditions and camping trips. There is great enthusiasm locally for these schemes. We fully support them and have commended these examples to chief constables and police authorities. We would certainly

welcome more initiatives on the same lines where chief constables and police authorities believe this would serve local needs and be practicable within the resources available to them.
I am not sure that I can say at this stage that we would go along with my hon. Friend's idea of a national scheme. Indeed, he himself gave reasons why one might have doubts about that. We must face the fact that, apart from anything else, there are resource implications. There are the demands for supervision on the two or three evenings a week that my hon. Friend has in mind. We all know that this is not a time when resources are anything other than tight. It is therefore right that local police authorities and chief constables must make up their own minds whether to use their resources for this kind of scheme. Nevertheless, I repeat that where such schemes exist we believe that they do a valuable job and we have drawn the attention of chief constables and police authorities generally to them.
The House will know that volunteer cadets are quite different from regular police cadets. Regular cadets work full time. They are taken for training with a view to becoming members of the force. Regular cadets cannot be engaged in law enforcement duties, which only a constable with police powers can carry out. Volunteer cadets also cannot be involved directly in police work, but they take part in special events such as police station open days. I think that it would be misconceived to suggest that volunteer cadets could be some sort of junior police force sent out on patrol to tackle juvenile crime, arresting people and so on. I do not think that that is what my hon. Friend has in mind. One would also have some reservations about volunteer cadets patrolling parks, for example. I think that that comes rather near to the concept of vigilantes, which has never been encouraged in this country. The suggestion about rounding up truants would also require very careful thinking before one could contemplate taking it any further. It must be remembered that there are specialised aspects to this work and one would not wish to spoil a good concept by involving cadets in activities which may not be suitable.
Although volunteer cadets cannot be involved directly in police work, the concept undoubtedly has potential for widening the links between the police and the community, including the ethnic minorities—a point that has been stressed more than once in the debate—and I am sure that many more youngsters would be interested in activities on these lines.
There is a lot more going on involving young people with the police which does not carry the label of "volunteer cadet scheme". One scheme launched by the Metropolitan Police recently made the national news. Sixth-formers from a London school went out on patrol for a week with home beat officers. They could see for themselves what the police did and form their own opinion. That is an imaginative way of educating young people and building better understanding. It is often said that young people today have no respect for authority. I think that it is rather that they are more questioning, more critical and, sometimes, certainly—we have to face this—ambivalent in their attitudes towards the police. The police invest a lot of time working in schools with youngsters and their teachers. Some schools in Greater Manchester, for example, have a "police week" when a whole range of activities are laid on involving all age groups with demonstrations, debates and entertainments. This is not


only an exercise in imparting knowledge. It develops closer fellowship with the police, a greater and more sympathetic understanding of their role and a deeper knowledge of what they are doing. Equally, many police forces have the kind of contact about which we have heard, providing pleasure for youngsters through organising football tournaments and other sports activities.
Another dimension is added by voluntary schemes associated with the police. One example is the Lancashire juvenile liaison association. This supports joint activity with the police such as adventure weekends for youngsters. One scheme which has attracted a good deal of press interest, and which seems to have had some practical effect, is the junior police and community club—the so-called "Kiddie-Cops"—initiated and run by a constable in Clovelly, Devon. Some 100 young people aged 14 to 15 take part. The idea is that members should report information to the police and the aim is to develop mutual trust and friendship between the police and young people. Among the current activities organised by the police are canoeing and archery. It seems that vandalism, theft and petty crimes committed by young people have all but disappeared in the neighbourhood.
A specialised contribution has been made by the voluntary agency NACRO, which is running many pilot projects on community approaches to crime prevention, assisted by Government funds, focusing particularly on run-down housing estates. The close involvement of residents, teachers and school children has improved the quality of life and seems to have reduced the level of vandalism. It could be that these projects have engendered more positive feeling towards the locality—a shared interest in looking after their own neighbourhood.
The voluntary sector itself also makes a contribution. A great deal of voluntary sector provision plays its part in this, but in certain parts of the country voluntary agencies provide facilities which have the specific objective of helping youngsters who are thought to be at risk of offending. These facilities, which were touched on by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead, are generally referred to as preventive intermediate treatment, or preventive IT. The Government gave grants to voluntary organisations for IT provision totalling £500,000 in 1981–82. Voluntary organisations may also apply for grants from the intermediate treatment fund, to which the Government contributed £340,000 during the same year. We very much applaud those efforts.
The special contribution of the voluntary sector is that facilities are often run by local people who are aware of the needs of the locality and of the attitudes and aspirations of the youngsters. The youngsters see them as ordinary people rather than as representatives of officialdom, and this can make it much easier to ensure their co-operation and commitment. However, we would not necessarily want to see voluntary sector provision going it alone. Provision within a locality often needs to be jointly planned and co-ordinated in order to ensure that all needs are met in the right way, with the right balance between statutory and voluntary sectors. Some system of interagency co-operation at local level is the best way of ensuring that provision is properly co-ordinated, and in the Home Office we are considering ways in which this can be encouraged.
The Government will continue to encourage efforts to make a reality of community involvement in crime prevention. Local discussions are taking place at present between the Home Office, the police and other statutory agencies and voluntary groups on Lord Scarman's recommendation for police community consultation. Development of local liaison committees will, we believe, bring about better mutual understanding and full support which is so essential. We hope, too, that local liaison committees will explore practical ways of helping to prevent crime and initiatives with youngsters in the neighbourhood. We shall certainly look at this in drawing up procedures for the best method of consultation.

Mr. Lyell: Does my right hon. Friend accept what I said about the significance of truancy in juvenile crime? Can he dovetail that into what he is now saying? I congratulate the Home Office on its efforts with intermediate treatment and on its community involvement.

Mr. Raison: No one could deny that truancy can contribute to crime. There is no question about that. The main burden for dealing with truancy in the immediate sense lies with the education services, rather than those services for which the Home Office is responsible—the education welfare services, and so on, which are the modern version of the truancy officers. I cannot speak on that subject. We should all realise that we cannot tackle this serious problem unless the police service, the local education services and welfare services get together. Common sense tells' us that if 15-year-olds are not at school but are hanging around all day, they are extremely liable to get into trouble. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead was quite right to raise the matter in the context of this debate.
My hon. and learned Friend and others, including my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford, South and Northampton, North talked about different forms of national service, in some cases with a defence element, and in other cases relating to national community service. I shall not speak at length on the subject, because this debate has a more narrow focus than that, and it is a subject which has been discussed at length in recent months.
However, perhaps I should remind the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has now proposed his youth adventure training scheme, from which I understand that about 6,000 to 7,000 16 to 18-year-olds are intended to benefit. I believe that the two-week courses under that scheme are likely to begin soon. I was interested to hear my hon. Friend say that the concept that has been applied to policing and defence might also be applied to fire and civil defence. That topic has not cropped up in the discussions. It is an interesting thought and one that we should ponder. I am glad that my hon. Friends raised a matter which I know concerns them closely and which attracts a good deal of sympathy in many parts of the country.
The kinds of activities that I have mentioned are only a small sample of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the many groups who are involved with youngsters, and which share the common aim of channeling the energy of these young people into rewarding activity and deflecting them from crime and delinquency.
Voluntary schemes run by the police are but one excellent example. It is fair to say that this country has always been rich in opportunities for voluntary activity,


not least for young people, and it is not necessarily true that we have to create elaborate new organisations when valuable organisations already exist which could often do with a little more support and more membership. We believe that police volunteer cadet schemes should be locally organised, and only chief constables and police authorities can determine whether such a scheme is practicable and suited to the circumstances in their own areas. The Government will continue to support the efforts of the police to strengthen the fellowship with young people which can do a great deal to help to prevent juvenile crime. I, like the rest of the House, am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving us this opportunity to explore these matters and to state our position.

Mr. Lee: We have had a useful and fascinating debate. Although there have been only a few contributors, we have embarked on a fairly wide trip. We have taken in the independent nuclear deterrent, the death penalty, the great train robbery, and even last night's by-election.
I thank all those who have contributed to the debate, especially the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill), representing the Opposition, who stayed with us all morning in splendid isolation. I am grateful for her encouraging words. I thank her for the way in which she accepted the idea of the voluntary cadet scheme and for having considered a form of junior specials.
It has been suggested that perhaps I have placed too much emphasis on the police and police stations. I stress that overall control of the community cadet scheme would be under some form of liaison group, made up of the police and community leaders.
My hon. Friends covered a range of topics. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), who is not in the Chamber at the moment, in his usual robust and enthusiastic way has done a great deal of work in this area and produced a number of papers and pamphlets on the subject.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) brought in the wide-ranging voluntary groups, including the scouts, the Boys' Brigade, the Samaritans, and the civil defence. He talked particularly about the possibility of my scheme developing the character of young people.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Lyell) widened the debate by talking about unemployment. He emphasised the service to the community, brought in the subject of truancy, and queried whether my community cadet scheme could help to bring truants back into the fold of the schools.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies), with his extensive legal background, talked about the work being done in Kent by the probation service. He said that he did not want the community cadet scheme to be too identified with the police. I thank him for his extensive contribution.
In particular, I place on record my appreciation of the presence and the speech of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. By raising this subject, I am not sure whether I have done him a favour. I have perhaps given him a respite from the well-known immigration trolleys that normally face him, to which I contribute, as a Member of Parliament with a substantial minority community. Perhaps I have ruined his weekend by forcing him to take home with him this weekend rather more work than he otherwise would.
I thank my right hon. Friend for being with us this morning and for being so sympathetic to what I have said. He emphasised that we should work in partnership and that policing has to be by consent, and he put Home Office support very much behind the voluntary cadet scheme. One thing that has emerged this morning is that this is perhaps the first occasion on which the whole concept of a voluntary cadet force has been discussed on the Floor of the House. I venture to suggest that the subject has not been brought up before. My right hon. Friend also drew attention to a number of new voluntary activities that are being undertaken in different parts of the country, of which I and many other right hon. and hon. Members were unaware.
I am grateful for the indulgence of the House in giving me the time to move my motion. I am glad that the Home Office is prepared in principle to consider the idea.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House, conscious of the rise in juvenile crime, believes that consideration should be given to the creation of community cadets to assist both the police and the voluntary sector, primarily in a community and preventive role.

Single and Homeless Persons

12 noon

Mr. R. A. McCrindle: I beg to move,
That this House takes note of the recommendations of the report 'Single and Homeless'; and welcomes the report as valuable research on which to base future policy.
One of the great advantages of these Friday morning sittings is that they allow Back-Bench Members to focus on topics of considerable importance, but which, in a crowded Government timetable, are all too liable to be squeezed out of consideration.
It is a great pity that the debates often take place against a backcloth of empty Benches. I am bound to say "empty on both sides of the House", so as not to be accused of making a party point. Nevertheless, the comfort that we take is that the matters that we discuss on Friday mornings are heard well outside the confines of the House. In addition, the Government of the day have an opportunity to give the House and the country their reactions to matters of considerable social importance.
My main reason for raising this topic is not only that it is a matter of unquestionable importance, but that it gives me—if I may make the only party political point that I propose to make during the whole of my speech—an opportunity to give the lie to the suggestion in some organs of the media that Her Majesty's Government—and therefore, by implication, their supporters—are not at all interested in this important subject, or, worse still, have tried to suppress some of the more important aspects of the report.
I want to give the Government the opportunity to outline their reactions to that important piece of research. In addition, I hope to comment on what to me are the fatuous suggestions that appeared in both The Times and The Guardian when the "Single and Homeless" report was published.
To get that disagreeable aspect out of the way quickly, I quote from The Guardian of 9 March 1982:
The Government today is to publish a research report from which it has deleted half the recommendations to deal with the problem of single homeless people".
That is a serious allegation for a responsible newspaper to make. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to confirm that that is not the case and that, like me—and I suspect like most hon. Members—he thoroughly welcomes this important document and there has been no question of its having been doctored before publication.
On 11 March 1982 The Times stated:
Minister for Housing told MPs in 1979 that the Department of the Environment was sponsoring a 'major research project' on the accommodation problems of single people".
The article went on to say:
The report, published as a Stationery Office booklet, came out … without copies being sent to the press or MPs.
As a Member of Parliament of some 12 years' standing, I am not accustomed to receiving every Government publication without invitation. Indeed I should make it clear that I do not want every publication to be sent to me without prior application. Therefore, the article in The Times of 11 March is not well founded. I regret that the article implied that the Government were undervaluing a piece of research which I believe they accept as being very important. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will comment on those press reports.
I congratulate the Centre for Environmental Studies on a very good piece of work. Although it confirms some of the factors that we all knew—or thought we knew—it reveals aspects of the problem that were not widely understood. Therefore, there is much to be welcomed in the report. Government policies can now, more than ever before, be based on facts about the single and homeless instead of on the widespread assumptions—some would say widespread prejudices—on which previous Governments may have been pressed to base them. Without qualification, I welcome the document.
There is widespread acceptance that the term "single and homeless" is synonymous with the dossers, the indolent and the alcoholics. Regrettably, the report confirms that such people form part of the single and homeless problem. However, those who read the report may argue that they constitute a part of the problem that may be easier to solve than some of the other parts to which the report draws attention.
The report broadens the definition of the single and homeless and pinpoints the wider aspects of the problem. Who else is included in the "single and homeless"? Some facts emerge from the report which have not always been at the heart of our previous considerations. It is revealed that women as well as men form part of the problem. For reasons that I have never understood, discussions on this difficult subject have always seemed to assume that the problem was almost exclusively confined to men. However, of those surveyed, about one-third were women. It also showed that the women tended to be fairly young. Perhaps we have not always been aware of that fact.
Most of those surveyed did not want to live in hostels. Previous debates have always seemed to revolve around the need for a hostel building programme. Nothing in the report denies that, but it underlines—perhaps for the first time—the fact that most of those involved would prefer to live in accommodation other than that provided in hostels. The report also reveals that there is a wide age range and that it is not only the elderly who are single and homeless. Those involved range from 20 to pensionable age. I should not automatically have realised that many of the single and homeless have skills and that some are highly qualified and have received higher education.
Although there are some with health and social problems, there are many within the category described as single and homeless who are affected by neither health nor social problems. We also discover that large numbers of the single and homeless, particularly in the large cities, have a Scottish or an Irish background. As one who, many years ago, came from Scotland to the South, I should be the first to be aware that a sizeable number of people living in the capital city and in the principal English conurbations come from Scotland and Ireland. I have to confess that, at a time of higher unemployment in those areas than we suffer in London and the South-East, it is not perhaps surprising that there has been a gravitation of Scottish and Irish people.
Without questioning the value of the report, I am led to wonder whether the sample upon which it was based will really turn out to have been wide enough to justify it as a total basis for future policy. Certain problems occur to me as I read the report. Even after a detailed study such as this, there is a question over the whole definition of the


single and the homeless. I should like to mention one or two anomalies which, although not invalidating the report, pinpoint the need for further study.
I take first the problems associated with age. We find that 50 per cent. of people in the London borough of Haringey are between the ages of 20 and 29, whereas the average is 25 per cent. When we look at educational standards, again in the London borough of Haringey, we find that 68 per cent. stayed at school or had further education, whereas the average is 36 per cent. One might assume, on the basis of those findings, which represent almost half the total sampling, that the whole problem revolves around the young and the educated who happen also to be single and homeless. I suggest that that would be an unwise basis for policy.
I come now to those with social and medical problems. If we look at Tower Hamlets, another London borough, we find that only 35 per cent. have no physical handicaps, whereas the average in the sample as a whole is 54 per cent. One can be forgiven for concluding that the single and homeless are elderly, ill educated and in poor health. If that leads me to a conclusion it is that the Government have an important role to play in any policy for the abatement of the single homeless problem. Their area of activity is no more than to create the framework and no doubt to take account of some aspects of the finance. The real introduction of a solution to the problems lies with the local authorities. Different solutions will no doubt be proposed by different local authorities, because a different emphasis will be placed on who are the single and the homeless.
I wish to deal with more general points that leave me wondering whether we can rely upon this report as the total basis upon which to hang our policy. There is a high number, 40 per cent., of educated people, 12 per cent. of them with either degrees or technical college education, among the sample. Can it therefore be presumed that, whatever else the single and the homeless may be, they are not inarticulate but that they are rather impecunious? One would be entitled to draw those conclusions from the report. Again, however, one can only draw them from certain of the samples.
The difficulty that one encounters in basing policy on the report is that it does not cover a wide enough spectrum of society. That does not, of course, devalue its importance. We discover that 10 per cent. of the single and homeless suffer from mental illness. One is bound to ask oneself the question that the survey does not answer. Why are these people not either in a mental institution or at least in some way supervised? The report is inconclusive on the matter.
We discover that social and medical problems increase with the length of time that people are homeless. I should have thought, at the risk of challenging those on the Opposition Benches, who take a different view—there are not many hon. Members at this moment to challenge—that this may well be an argument at least for some short period accommodation. The shorthold provisions of the Housing Act 1980 may well prove a contributory solution to these difficulties. At the very least, they would prevent a long continuation of the problem. There would be the prospect, one hopes, that people would have a home for no matter how short a period. Those are some of the questions that arise from the report and it is correct that attention should be drawn to them.
I return to the central findings. If a large number are educated, the question arises whether we should concern ourselves at all. I doubt whether we should think about institutions. The report proves that most of the educated homeless are in large cities and wish to live near the centre of these cities. There are three recommendations that I wish to make. The first is that local authorities which find difficulty in renting tower block flats to families—there are many—might be encouraged to convert these flats to single accommodation. I go further. They might explore the possibility of furnishing the flats, wholly or partly, because this is the kind of accommodation that appears to be most acceptable to the type of person about whom I am talking.
Secondly, there should be an adaptation of the shorthold concept to give some minimum additional security to the tenant, while assuring the landlord that he retains the right of repossession. Thirdly, the banks and the building societies should be encouraged to develop the availability of mortgages to purchase inner city properties. We should press them to consider providing longer-term mortgages, so that people on modest incomes will be better able to purchase accommodation. We should ask them to consider the transferability of a mortgage taken out by a young woman to her husband when eventually she marries. Many young women, I believe, think twice before embarking on a mortgage which seems a long and onerous financial responsibility. I believe that the building societies, by introducing more flexibility, could encourage more single and homeless young people to purchase their own accommodation.
I wish to pay tribute to various voluntary groups. SHAC and CHAR have done good work and continue to do so. I must place on record, however, that I do not agree with the contention by CHAR that the problem can be solved only by the local authorities. I have no hesitation in saying that the local authorities have an important role to play, but we shall never solve this problem if we ignore the contributions that can be made by the private sector landlord, building societies and other institutions.
There is a big requirement to increase the supply to meet the demand at a price that can be afforded. No social service element is involved in this area of encouragement to the young, educated single homeless person. We need to consider the economic pressures on such people. It is interesting to note that many homeless people leave rented and furnished accommodation because it is unsatisfactory and the standards are unacceptable. That may be the reason for some—particularly the young homeless—to move on.
Is there anything outrageous in suggesting that there should be a tenant's charter or something of that sort for privately rented flats and bed-sits? Good landlords would have nothing to fear from that. The introduction of some basic standards of accommodation has never been given attention. If we did that, people would be less prone to move from unsatisfactory rented flats or bed-sits. only to remain homeless for a considerable time thereafter.
Of course, not all of the single homeless are young and educated. Therefore, I shall deal first with the young who have poor educational standards. They are likely to be what one might kindly call "occupationally mobile"—if they have a job at all. Many will be in casual work. It appears that more still will be in the catering trade and


similar jobs on low income. It is an inescapable fact that many such people seem to prefer what I might call the "camaraderie" of institutions.
There is need to develop general purpose hostels, just as there is need to improve the standards of existing hostels. I have never understood why—I certainly do not understand after reading the report—hostels should be equated with down-and-outs. There will always be a range of single homeless people—youngish or perhaps towards middle age, with jobs, but on low incomes—who may welcome the opportunity to share in what I called the camaraderie of hostels.
There is also a need for special purpose hostels. Many of the single homeless have psychological problems. Some are young and some are not so young. There is a small but worrying group of people who sleep rough. I have no hesitation in saying that this is a considerable social problem. I want an expansion of such hostels. There must be hostels for those who would prefer to live in particular sorts of accommodation, and particularly hostels where an element of care can be provided for those with psychological or social problems.
There are also those whose only crime is that they are old and homeless. There is need for differential Government financial assistance to local authorities prepared to erect warden-controlled accommodation. Such accommodation gives these people all the advantages of independence. However, it also gives them the freedom to associate with others in similar circumstances. They also have the knowledge that they can fall back on a warden-supported system. This type of accommodation is satisfactory for those who are old but reasonably fit.
A phenomenon underlined in the report but which has not been emphasised in the past is the preparedness—almost the anxiety—of many in most age groups to share accommodation. How does one go about organising that? Of course, there are flat-sharing advertisements in newspapers. Some agencies have the job of bringing together two, three or more people who wish to share a flat. Government encouragement for, as distinct from Government involvement in, the creation of more of these flat-sharing agencies might play an important part in ending the problems of three or more single homeless people at the same time. That could be done only on a private basis. The fee charged would well be worth paying. Many would be prepared to pay it if they could, in the process, be brought into contact with an amenable Sharer. This applies particularly to furnished accommodation.
If local authorities feel that they cannot fill tower blocks with families, perhaps a greater effort should be made not just to convert them into single persons' accommodation, but for the authorities to act as agencies to bring together several individuals seeking such accommodation and who are sufficiently mobile to take advantage of tower blocks in a way that families cannot. If local authorities are unable to convert them into single units, why should the flats not be rented to several single people, with the local authorities acting as agents for the hopeful occupiers?
Recommendation 7 in the report states:
At the local authority level provision for the single homeless requires co-ordination of a range of agencies offering advice, accommodation, cash, social and medical support. In our view, the legislative framework for such provision already exists; positive initiatives to intervene in the homeless problem can go

a long way to improving measures locally and to exploiting the existing legislative framework to full effect. In some areas working groups have been established to co-ordinate the relevant agencies and to develop common policies in assisting single homeless people.
Of course, "co-ordination" is one of those much abused words which can mean anything or nothing to a variety of people. The report underlines the evidence that a lack of co-ordination can mean wasted facilities or even ignorance of their existence. Both Government and local authorities have a role, which need not cost much money, if any, to make those in the category that we are discussing more widely aware of the existing facilities.
On the question of legislation, that quotation no doubt implies that the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 has not had an effect on the single homeless in the way that it has to some degree on those with families. The Minister may wish to deal with that when he replies to the debate. I repeat that it might be useful if the Department of the Environment and the housing and social services sectors of local authorities were to consider how best to coordinate their existing facilities and how to disseminate information to those who could best take advantage of it.
It is a useful, if somewhat incomplete, report. It reveals factors about the situation that have not hitherto been appreciated. It points to the need for action. I suggest, first, that action should be taken to ease the position of the young, educated homeless by more flexible use of shorthold tenancies, by longer period mortagages and by releasing flats, whether converted or not, in tower blocks for those who are fit.
Secondly, attention must be drawn to the need for more general hostel accommodation and a greater use of social service support in hostels for people requiring residual care. Thirdly, we must consider how best to encourage flatsharing by private or public agencies and create a code of conduct for landlords and tenants for flats and bedsitters. Lastly, the erection of warden-controlled blocks for the fit and the elderly must be encouraged.
Within the list there are many things that could be done now. Some need not cost money. I have tried to bring thought to bear on how to embark on a practical programme for a sizeable section of the community. I recognise the financial constraints and social imperatives. I have drawn attention to the important report and given the Government an opportunity to respond. It is my fervent wish that the Government will outline how they believe they can improve their role. I look forward to the Minister's reply.

Mr. A. W. Stallard: I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle) on raising this matter. I had been ambling more leisurely towards a much fuller debate on the report "Single and Homeless" at a later stage. I still hope that we shall have one.
Following the euphoria of last night's election, I hoped that we would have been joined by others who wished to take an early opportunity to express interest and to outline their policies on two major issues—juvenile crime and this motion. Their absence is perhaps a sad reflection of their interest. Many hon. Members cannot be here, but others should be here to debate such issues.
I recognise what the Government have done. The Minister will be aware of the feelings that I have expressed in recent debates. I do not retract what I have said. Indeed, I may add to it today.
I welcome the report. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar said that the report had been unfairly received by the press, which suggested that a conspiracy surrounded its publication. Let us put the matter into perspective. Hon. Members had difficulty in obtaining the report. We do not expect to receive every report through the post, but we expect reports that have involved research by dedicated people and a great deal of time, effort and money to be readily available, without our having to create a fuss to get a copy. Members of the press who would normally expect to get a copy had similar difficulties. Why were so few copies of the report published and why is it so expensive? The price is almost beyond the pocket of those most interested and affected.
From all that, it may be reasonable to suspect that wide publication of the research findings and recommendations may have been thought to be against the interests of the Government. They may not have wanted a wide debate with by-elections pending. It may have been embarrassing for the Government to explain that they had taken certain action which was not enough, but that they would not spend more money on the problem.
A review is being conducted. I exonerate the Minister and his colleagues from my criticism, but other Conservative Members wish for severe and drastic changes in the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, which would worsen the position. I fear that we may be on the verge of recommendations on those lines. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that the Government will not worsen the situation. I fear that the backwoodsmen may be forcing their will on the Government.
The Government may not have wanted to be asked by those who understand the problem and who are involved why they did not make the necessary resources available to tackle it. That is why we suspect that there may have been an attempt to keep the matter low key. I do not suggest that the report was deliberately hidden, although we could have been forgiven for thinking that when it was published the night before the Budget. Interest in the Budget would make sure that it did not get much publicity. Such tactics are used by Governments.
I say all that in reply to the hon. Gentleman's criticism of the press. In the circumstances, we were all entitled to feel that an attempt had been made to play down the report. This is an important document, the production of which took many years of study and research, and it comes up with some useful, informative and worrying findings. However, the Department's press release is contained on a single sheet of paper, and even that is not concerned entirely with the report. Only two small paragraphs deal with it. The greater part of the press release lists telephone numbers from which further information may be obtained.
It cannot be said that the press release demonstrates the attempt of the Government to say how proud they are of the document, that the research justifies what they have been saying about the problem and that they intend to act on the report's findings and want news of them blazoned in the newspapers. It barely mentions that the report has been published and it gives none of the details.
Those factors added together justify those of us who get the impression that the Government do not want the

report's findings to be known too widely because it is too embarrassing in present circumstances, given all their other policies.
I congratulate the Centre for Environmental Studies and its research team. It is always invidious to mention names. However, the report refers to most of them, although it concentrates on the three researchers who produced it—Madeline Drake, Maureen O'Brien and Tony Biebuyck—as well as Patricia Downey, who was involved from the very beginning.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar tended to play down the immense amount of work involved in producing the report. He complained that the researchers carried out their studies only in Tower Hamlets, Haringey and so on. In my view, they involved a tremendous amount of work, and I am greatly impressed by the understanding and compassion that comes through the reports of the interviews conducted by the researchers and by the depth and detail of their documentation. Their approach to the problem of the single homeless deserves our congratulations.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar made a number of interesting references to Tower Hamlets and Haringey, but he missed the point. Because of the distribution of the kind of accommodation that is discussed in the report, it is inevitable that researchers concentrate on such areas as Tower Hamlets, Camden and parts of Liverpool. That is where the mass of this kind of accommodation, unfortunately, is to be found. Those are the only areas where the single homeless can find accommodation. That being so, I do not place too much weight on the hon. Gentleman's conclusions drawn from what he considers to be the key areas.
I mention these features because in my view this short debate will not be sufficient. We shall have to involve many more people in the debate both inside and outside the Chamber before we can begin to tackle the problem.
I refer now to the reception given to the report when eventually it was winkled out of the Department and sent to those places where it should be. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar referred to press reports which said that the report had been doctored, and he denigrated that kind of reporting. However, I refer to a report published in the Bradford, Yorkshire, Telegraph and Argus. I do not know the paper, so I have no axe to grind in its favour or against it. It said:
A storm of criticism is building up around the Government's decision to 'rub out' many of the recommendations contained in a major new report on the homeless.
It goes on to quote Professor David Donnison, the former chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission and a member of the advisory committee that produced the report. He said:
The report expressed our increasing conviction that hostels are not very good places to keep people… But I think the Government probably didn't want to provoke public pressure for expenditure at a time when they are trying to persuade local authorities to spend less—so it deleted half the recommendations.
It is not the press reporter who is saying that. Nor is it The Guardian or The Times. This is Professor David Donnison, whom we know and respect for the tremendous job that he did and continues to do. He said that half the recommendations had been deleted, and he went on to denounce the suppression as "an outrage".
The report got off on the wrong foot, and that is sad. I have read it, and I find it excellent. I cannot comment


on the recommendations that were deleted—unfortunately, I have been unable to find them but later, perhaps, I shall comment on some of the recommendations that were included.
The background to the problem is set out clearly in the report. It spans a number of years. Work on it started in 1976. Probably it was overtaken in some respects by the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act and the effect that that legislation had.
The hon. Gentleman referred to Tower Hamlets and Haringey, but they are not the only places concerned. He seemed to give the impression that it was a very small survey, not very widely drawn. Perhaps, unconsciously, he was suggesting that we should not take too much notice of it because it was concentrated on only one or two small areas, but over three years no fewer than 7,360 cases of single homelessness were covered by the research. I dare say that nowhere near as many people were involved in the various polls conducted in Hillhead. Polls conducted in relation to by-elections do not involve nearly as much research, yet their results are blazoned in every newspaper, and on television and radio.
The survey covered people from seven districts—Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Bedford, Brighton, and the London boroughs of Camden, Haringey and Tower Hamlets. The hon. Gentleman did not mention Camden. Obviously, that is a fairly broad spread of the country. Those are the kinds of areas where problems exist, as is well known, whether it be a seaside town or an inner city area.

Mr. McCrindle: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to misrepresent what I said. I take his point that the areas in which the surveys were undertaken cover a good deal of the country. My purpose in saying what I did about Tower Hamlets on the one hand and Haringey on the other was to pinpoint that from two London boroughs, not a million miles from each other, different conclusions could be drawn. Therefore, to take any of the recommendations as applying automatically to all the areas surveyed—and to many of the areas not surveyed—would be unfortunate. That is the only point that I was making.

Mr. Stallard: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for enlarging on the point. If I did him a disservice, I apologise to him, but I do not think that his explanation has changed the position. Because of the distribution of hostels, one would be bound to get certain results by concentrating on one or two places. I imagine that the survey was spread widely in order to get a broader band of results. That aspect did not come out in the hon. Gentleman's speech, and I am glad that he has at least put that right. I would not have wanted it to be thought that it was a narrow survey; on the contrary, it tended to go fairly wide.
There were 6,500 clients who were considered and referred to a national agency. They would obviously cover a wide spectrum of problems. There was a survey of 308 users of an East London night shelter. The findings of the survey in that respect are fairly comprehensive and I am sure that we shall take them seriously.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the mentally sick, the mentally handicapped, and so on. Quite unconsciously, people can fall into the trap of categorising people by

saying "We know that they are all drunks or dossers." I know that that was not the hon. Gentleman's intention, but by referring to the mentally handicapped in this context it is easy to give the impression that such people comprise the bulk of the homeless.
A survey carried out recently by the After Six Housing Service Advisory Trust, which deals with the homeless in London, showed that only 7 per cent. of inquirers at its housing advice switchboard were known to have special problems, such as those mentioned by the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar. That leaves a lot of homeless people who are not known to have special problems. After Six included mental illness, pregnancy and serious physical illness among the special problems. Therefore, it would be wrong to blow up that aspect of the matter, because it would distract us from the nub of the problem.
The single homeless are not all dossers, drunks, ne'er-do-wells, drug addicts and winos. We must destroy that myth. I know that the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar would not want to perpetuate it, but he may, unconsiously, have been fuelling some of the fires by trying to elevate one or two special problems. I hope that the Minister will accept that the research lays to rest the myths about homeless single people. We now know that there is a serious problem of homelessness and we should tackle it as a problem of homelessness. Within the problem, there are bound to be special categories, as there are among all classes, but we can deal with those in the normal course of our work.
The Department's report says that the single homeless are a wide-ranging, heterogeneous group with one factor in common. They lack a secure home. That is the aspect on which I concentrate. I tried in an Adjournment debate last Thursday to outline some of the problems suffered by those unfortunate people, including lack of security of tenure, vulnerability and lack of privacy. Those and other problems stem from the lack of a secure home and security.
As I said on Thursday, the single homeless have no social life. They cannot have a cup of tea and a sandwich at home; they cannot invite friends back to their room, because often they do not have a room of their own. Sometimes they have only a cubicle. I spelled out on Thursday the problems faced by those who, through no fault of their own, have to live in such accommodation.
According to the report, men in that category outnumber women by three to one, but the worrying feature is that the proportion of women is rising dramatically and the number is much higher than at the time of the 1972 study by the DHSS. The average age of those women is reducing. Most are under 30 and had further education or professional training beyond the school leaving age. That must worry us and make us ask how they got into their present position. That is another aspect which cannot be dodged. The report makes it clear that the economic state of the country is a major factor in people having to leave their homes. There are many reasons why people have to move. A major reason is to look for work. That creates an added burden for reception areas which already have insufficient resources to cope.
A total of 36 per cent. of people surveyed were in their teens or twenties. About 8 per cent. were pensioners, so we are discussing problems at both ends of the scale. The most recent jobs of 33 per cent. of the people surveyed were in the top three occupational classes. They had had professional, intermediate, skilled manual or unskilled


manual jobs. That helps to explode the myth. The category of person involved is not necessarily that which is commonly imagined in relation to the homeless. That aspect should be emphasised.
The report brings out the vicious circle of being homeless and jobless. Once a person is unemployed he finds it difficult to find a home or any place to live. Once a person has been made homeless it is almost impossible for him to get a job. He is then on the awful vicious circuit of homelessness and joblessness.
I know people in my constituency who are reluctant to give a hostel address when interviewed by a potential employer because the employer will say "That doss house! That's where ex-cons and drug addicts live." One can see the employer's mind working as the address is given. A stigma is attached to being homeless and living in a hostel. A person might give a false address and get into all sorts of trouble. Desperation drives him to do that so that he can secure a job and return to mainstream housing.
The report illustrates the stigma involved. On page 88,
it says:
Another problem for hostel-dwellers is that they are frequently stigmatised by potential employers. As one person put it:
'If you are working, and you may be working in some hotel, you can't give this address to an employer as he's not going to entertain you, is he?'
The minute that such an address is given the applicant's chances are over. The report continues:
Pubs and entertainment facilities around hostels tend to exclude hostel dwellers. One discussant complained:
'I've been turned out of two pubs in this area because they told me I was a dosser. Everybody looks around and hears and it's embarrassing. I asked one chap why he was turning me out and he said "You live in…; you're not allowed in".'".
Such people have to carry that stigma. Is it any wonder that they go from bad to worse and get into trouble?
Another problem that worries me is the difficulty that hostel dwellers have in getting on to a doctor's panel and receiving medical care. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have been trying to improve such facilities for many years. My example is of a man who had a colostomy following an operation for cancer and who needed privacy to change the bags containing eliminated body waste. He could find nowhere that offered him that basic requirement and he described his predicament on page 87:
Of course, I've had a colostomy and I've got this bag and I have to change it. I've got a month's supply from the hospital—I'll show you one so that you know what I'm talking about. I've had this operation. They removed the cancer and I hope I do not get another one. I've got to do this two or three times a day and I need privacy ….
Where will that man get the sort of privacy that he needs in the sort of accommodation which the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar mentioned at the end of his speech? The man has a serious problem, not because he does not wish to live in proper accommodation but because he cannot find accommodation at a rent that he can afford.
The outstanding feature not only of this report, but of the report by After Six entitled "London's Neglected Homeless", the Lewisham single housing group's report and the Association of Chief Housing Officers of Greater Manchester's 1980 survey of 11 hostels for the single homeless, is that the vast majority of those who live in such accommodation would be able to manage their own self-contained accommodation. In "Single and Homeless", the figure is 85 per cent. and I have also seen figures of 83 per cent. and 77 per cent. There is no doubt that the vast majority wish to live in decent houses, flats

or bed-sits. They do not rule out sharing accommodation or the sort of special accommodation mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, but they wish to have more independence and privacy and all that goes with it.
Professor Donnison says:
Most want a home of their own, but being in a hostel can actually make this more difficult.
That is true. Generally, people who live in those hostels do not qualify for rehousing by the local authority. They are excluded by the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 if they do not come into the right category. They do not accumulate sufficient points on most of the schemes run by local authorities and they will rot away in these huge prison-like institutions unless we begin to tackle the problem. As the report states, they need their own homes.
In the Adjournment debate last week I quoted the Minister for Housing and Construction, as follows:
There is significantly greater scope for helping some of those now living in impersonal, over-large and unsatisfactory hostel accommodation to establish themselves successfully in contained accommodation—[Official Report, 19 March 1982; Vol. 20, c. 595.] We welcomed that statement and congratulated the Minister on it. I do so again this morning, because that is the nub of the matter. We must change our attitude to the problems of the homeless and understand their difficulties. We must then agree with the Minister's remark and ask ourselves what we can do about it.
Although I was interested in what the hon. Gentleman said about mortgages, that proposal would not have mach support among the sort of people about whom I am talking. On the contrary, I come across more and more people either in London or on the outskirts who are being de-housed because they cannot afford a mortgage or because they have been made unemployed. To say that they may now be able to afford a mortgage because of the recent slight reduction in the interest rate will not solve the problem. It will not be a major contribution to helping the bulk of the single homeless people about whom we know.
It would help if we extended the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 rather than, as I fear may happen, restricting it in any way. I am supported in that view by a press release far longer than that of the Government who produced the report. The press release is issued by the Methodist Church Press Service on behalf of a number of religious organisations, including the Church of England Board for Social Responsibility, the Methodist Church Division of Social Responsibility, the Church and Society Department of the United Reformed Church and the Catholic Housing Aid Society. Commenting on the document, "Single and Homeless", they say that the scope of the problem is
so great that the only adequate response is Government action. As well as strengthening the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, the Government should increase housing investment".
All those bodies, which are intimately involved with this problem, clearly and unequivocally ask the Government to strengthen the Act and bring into it those who were excluded from priority categories when it was first introduced. We are all saying that there must be more provision, not less, in the Act.
To sum up, I repeat some of the steps that the Minister should consider in his quest for a solution if we are ever to come to terms with this problem. I have mentioned the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. I have also said—I touched on this in an Adjournment debate—that we welcome the Government's initiative on hostels, and we


were grateful for the Minister's reply to our letter to him when that initiative was taken. But that does not go far enough. I return to the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the inference that only the local authorities should deal with this. I believe that he criticised CHAR for saying that the local authorities should handle the problem. We are not saying that it should be local authorities alone. The Government are making provision and taking extra initiatives for housing associations to become involved. That is good and we are delighted. In addition, however, they should embark upon a programme for local authorities to provide the necessary hostel accommodation, and adequate resources should be made available for local authorities to provide the range of accommodation needed by the homeless.
I therefore hope that what I have said about local authorities today, together with what I have said in Adjournment debates, will be taken into account by the Minister. I do not think it would do much good to quote at great length today, although I should have liked to go into greater detail about Camden's policy, for instance. I shall perhaps be able to return to that in a later debate on this or some other report.
The hon. Gentleman seemed not to be aware, and he can be forgiven for that, that a number of local authorities—not just Camden; I have referred to Lewisham, and also the DHSS itself, as I mentioned in the recent Adjournment debate—have a planned approach to the problem. They are seriously considering how to tackle it and how to put these people into their own accommodation. As the Minister will know, Camden has produced a strategy for planned rehousing of single homeless people. The Government should encourage others to follow that example. The Minister should tell authorities that that is how it should be done and that the Government will take account of plans of that kind when considering HIP allocations and so on. He should say that the Government wish to channel more resources into that type of approach because they can see constructive results at the end of it. I hope that the Minister will tell us today that he would like all local authorities to take up that kind of initiative, and that he intends to step up the financial provision to make sure that local authorities can now carry out these planned programmes.
Other difficulties face councils such as Camden when they rehouse single homeless people. Many of those people would like furnished accommodation, which is almost non-existent these days, or totally out of their price range. So when local authorities or housing associations provide decent accommodation, furniture is a problem for many of these people. Often they have never had any furniture, and do not have the money to buy it. They need financial help in the beginning.
That brings me back to the Adjournment debate on 18 February of the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. Stoddart), when he raised the question of single parents. I realise that that matter is not within the remit of the Minister for Housing and Construction, but I hope that he will bring to the attention of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services the need to have another look at the regulations in this connection, so that help can be given to people who at the moment are being helped by some local authorities to find their own accommodation.
I conclude now, although there is much more that I could say. I hope that the Minister will have heard enough during the past few weeks to know that there is great concern throughout the country about this major problem, about our approach to the problem and—more important—about the lack of resources that are being chanelled in that direction. I hope that he will tell us today that the Government intend to take on board the recommendations in the report and the recommendations referred to by Professor Donnison which were omitted from the report. I hope that the Government will now reallocate resources to those local authorities which embark on a planned approach to housing single homeless people in self-contained units.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. John Stanley): I am sure that the House is extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle) for giving us an opportunity to debate this important subject. I share the disappointment of the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) that other parties are not represented here today. My hon. Friend made a very perceptive, constructive and effective speech in introducing the report entitled "Single and Homeless", and I thought that the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North, who also made a helpful and important contribution, was a little unfair to him in certain respects.
I start with the matter that was raised both by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar and the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North about the circumstances surrounding the publication of the report. I shall take this opportunity to lay several myths once and for all. To do that I shall quote in full the letter that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North on 10 March, in which my right hon. Friend clarified the Government's position towards the recommendations that were originally in the report. I shall also explain the reasons why, through an administrative error in the Department, unhappily, copies of the report are not available in the Vote Office.
My right hon. Friend said:
As you will appreciate, this document is not in the nature of a report to Parliament, nor does it deal with a subject raised in debates on matters currently before Parliament. The document is, in fact, an HMSO sale publication.
Our practice in such circumstances is to observe the usual courtesies by arranging for a copy of the document to be provided to the House Library at the time it goes to the Press and is placed on sale. The Department and the Stationery Office operate a standard procedure for this purpose.
Unfortunately, due to a combination of delayed delivery and human error, there was a breakdown in this procedure, with the result that the House Library did not receive a copy yesterday. We took urgent steps to remedy this, and a copy reached the House before 10 am this morning; and was followed by further copies at noon.
I stress that the letter is dated 10 March. The letter continues:
Unfortunately, this failure in the arrangements has been aggravated by a misleading article in yesterday's Guardian, suggesting that we had suppressed preliminary conclusions from the research covered by the report. This is simply untrue: a first draft of the report was submitted to the Department, together with other working documents, to be subsequently polished and refined with the agreement of the researchers responsible for the study. No changes were sought or made by Ministers.
I repeat that:
No changes were sought or made by Ministers. Nor is there any significance in the report's appearance on the eve of the


budget. This was simply the earliest date HMSO could manage for an already long delayed document.
I hope this explanation will reassure you that the temporary unavailability of the report in the House Library was no more than a failure in the relevant procedures, which we remedied as soon as it came to our attention.

Mr. Stallard: I received that letter. What worried me—and, I think, it would worry many people—was the phrase "polished and refined". It could be polished and refined by leaving out a certain page. I think that "polished and refined", not being enlarged upon, left room for doubt.

Mr. Stanley: I do not think there is any need for the hon. Gentleman to feel that there is some sort of mischievous activity inside the Department relating to the words "polished and refined". They mean exactly what they say. I assure the hon. Gentleman that it was a cooperative exercise between Department officials and the researchers who were engaged on that project. I repeat what was said in my right hon. Friend's letter.
No changes were sought or made by Ministers.
I cannot be more emphatic.
I come to the substance of the debate. Before coming to various proposals that have been made it might be helpful if I set out briefly the background to the report. The report follows research that was carried out over some years in the late 1970s, and was commissioned by the Labour Government. We have made it clear that we think that it is an important report, the results of which we look forward to seeing.
The House knows that until the early 1970s the single homeless were widely perceived as what may be described as vagrants, dossers, or, in some cases, tramps. In addition to being homeless, they were thought to suffer to a large extent from various behavioural disorders. Homelessness was often associated with alcoholism and such difficulties.
By the mid-1970s it was clear that that stereotyped view of homeless people was becoming increasingly divorced from reality. That is why, in 1976, the Labour Government commissioned this detailed research project to give us a much more broadly based and accurate perception of those who were in the category of the single homeless.
The project had the specific objectives of providing information on the characteristics and composition of the single homeless group; examining their housing needs and preferences; and estimating for what proportion the primary requirement was in fact for accommodation rather than for personal human care. The study method included sample surveys of single homeless people in seven local authority areas—Camden, Tower Hamlets, and Haringey in London, and in Manchester, Brighton, Bedford and Stoke-on-Trent. It also involved an examination of the records of two agencies dealing with the homeless—a national referral agency and an East London night shelter. It also involved—and this is an important aspect of the work-direct involvement with the homeless people themselves by means of discussion groups and many in-depth discussions.
In a sensible, constructive manner my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar queried how far it would be right to draw national statistical conclusions from a sample survey based on seven local authorities, two agencies and in-depth discussions. The best answer is that as the sample, although representative, is limited in terms of the number of local authorities involved, we cannot claim that every statistic in the report necessarily applies

nationally. The statistics for the sample are correct, but there would be a margin of error if we were to apply them nationally.
However, the survey is sufficiently representative of a cross-section for us to say that the broad conclusions and general thrust of the report are valid. That is my broad response to my hon. Friend's reasonable point. As hon. Members know, the conclusions of the report are set out in detail, but I should like to highlight two of them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar and the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North drew attention to the fact that the report asks some of us to change our views on who are the single and homeless. There is a basic need to re-educate people about the nature of that group. It can no longer be claimed that the single and homeless always suffer from multiple problems, such as behavioural, mental and psychological difficulties and will always require some form of highly specialised accommodation. It can no longer be said that as a group they are all unsuited for conventional accommodation.
The report demonstrates that fact clearly. It points out that a significant proportion of the single and home less want to cope in independent accommodation and in the majority of cases could do so if they were given a little extra by way of supporting services from local authority agencies, families or friends.
That is such a crucial element in the report that I shall stress what is said on page 105:
We conclude that about two-thirds of the single homeless require ordinary mainstream accommodation with little more than sensitive help and advice from housing management, to take account of their views on the type and location of accommodation, arrangements for sharing, need for furniture, and (for some) the need for practical help to arrange the move from hostel to more independent living. About half of this group will be willing to share their accommodation and the majority will require furnished rather than unfurnished provision. About half were assessed as having only one problem (such as physical illness) on the index of social and medical needs. These, or new needs as they arise, should, we consider, be met through the normal social service or medical provision, and do not necessitate residence in special accommodation.
That is a crucial aspect of the report's conclusions. It represents the central challenge to housing and accommodation and shows that a significant element of the single and homeless could use normal, more self-contained and independent accommodation, which should be made available to them.
There is a second and profoundly important conclusion to which reference has not been made but which I wish to highlight. It is important not so much for those concerned with housing as for those concerned with people in terms of their personal circumstances and their personal problems and for those who are concerned to try to help them. An aspect of the report bears on the social responsibilities of local authorities and the contribution that can be made by Churches, voluntary organisations and, perhaps most important, by families and friends.
I wish to refer specifically to recommendation 1 on page 106:
The largest contellation"—
that should, of course, be "constellation"—
of immediate reasons for homelessness is concerned with personal, familial or social crisis. Provision of advice and support for people in these circumstances would do much to intervene in the homeless process since at that stage a majority of our respondents were employed, and largely free from the problems that develop during protracted homelessness.
Hon. Members have concentrated on means of resolving housing problems that are created once homelessness has started. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that it would be infinitely preferable if homelessness could be prevented before the problems of long periods of homelessness arise and create real difficulties for people, building up, possibly, over a period of many years.
I have made many visits to some major hostels, particularly in the London area—to Salvation Army hostels and places like Spitalfields crypt, Bruce House and Carrington House. One meets people using that accommodation who are there because they have fallen on particularly difficult times, sometimes involving tragic and painful personal circumstances. They may have lost contact with their parents and their families. There has perhaps been some alienation in the family circle or a marriage breakdown and there is no one to provide support or help them.
These are people who, in many cases, have been cast adrift. An important element of responsibility and need exists in purely personal terms, especially at times when divorces tend to have reached a high level and family ties and responsibilities are not as strong as those that prevailed perhaps a generation or so ago. There is a need to focus on the underlying causes of homelessness.
An important point in the report is that most people, when made homeless, are probably in employment. The homelessness is often triggered by personal family breakdown. If that can be avoided, or, if it is unavoidable, if others can come forward to pick up the pieces, the acute housing problems that arise when people become homeless can be avoided.
I now deal with the ways in which the Government believe that the housing needs of the single and homeless can be met more satisfactorily. I wish to examine, in what I hope will be a positive and constructive manner, a considerable range of options available within the public and private sectors to deal with the housing needs of the single and homeless and to try to create the better sorts of accommodation for which the report calls. I wish, first, to deal with short-term accommodation and then with longer-term accommodation.
Many homeless people will usually require rented accommodation on a relatively short-term basis. We attach considerable importance to ensuring that both the public and private sectors can make some provision for meeting that short-term need. In the public sector, as the House knows, we made a specific provision in the Housing Act 1980 for local authorities to make accommodation available on a short-term basis for up to 12 months, without full security tenure applying to certain categories of people whom the authorities were considering under the homeless persons' legislation. Although I fully understand that the generality of single people are not within the priority categories for the purposes of that legislation, some groups-elderly people or those who might be threatened with financial or sexual exploitation—fall within priority categories. Local authorities can use the provision in schedule 3(5) to the Act to give those people short-term accommodation.
On the general issue of homeless persons' legislation, I cannot add to what was said during a previous Question

Time. However, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State expects shortly to be able to give the conclusions of that review.
I draw attention also to the special provision that we made in the Housing Act 1980 whereby local authorities can enter into what are often called "North Wilts" schemes, so that they can make arrangements with private owners of houses or flats to lease them on a short-term basis. Authorities can then use those properties for the short-term accommodation needs of people on their waiting lists. The owner of the property has a right of repossession at the end of an agreed term. That provides local authorities with a means of access to short-term accommodation for rented purposes if they want to use it.
We have now given all local authority tenants the right to take in lodgers and sublet. All hon. Members are aware, in their constituency capacities, that there is substantial under-occupation of local authority housing stock. As a matter of deliberate policy we have given security of tenure to all local authority tenants. That is an important security to give them. However, it means that there is considerable scope within the existing publicly rented stock for people to use the lodger and subletting ability that they now have under the tenant's charter. That also provides an avenue for single homeless people if they want to live in conventional forms of accommodation rather than hostels.
We have also done some significant things in the private sector to widen the scope for short-term provision. My hon. Friend rightly referred to shorthold. We brought forward that change, and it is important. It is of great regret to the Government that the Labour Party did not see fit to support what we did on shorthold. Indeed, it has made a commitment to repeal shorthold. That can only have the unhappy effect of ensuring that those who are now shorthold tenants will probably lose their accommodation before the end of this Parliament. In some cases they may run the regrettable risk of becoming homeless.
Shortholds provide a potentially valuable source of short-term accommodation. My hon. Friend asked us to make it more flexible. I should be ready to consider his specific proposals on that. We suggest that it is flexible now. It provides a means by which someone can let for between one and five years. I hope that my hon. Friend feels that that is sufficient flexibility on the length of tenure. It enables that form of tenure to meet the needs of many people, who may be single and homeless and who want short-term accommodation. If he wishes to make more proposals for greater flexibility, I shall be glad to receive his ideas.
Also in the privately rented sector we have made it much easier and more attractive for owner-occupiers who may have spare room, as resident landlords, to take tenants. Just as there is a substantial element of under-occupation in the publicly rented sector, there is also considerable potential in the owner-occupier sector for people who have houses or flats that are too large for them, who face large rate or fuel bills and who would be happy to let rooms on a sub-tenancy. We have made that much easier. Here, too, I hope that there is scope to meet the short-term renting needs of the single homeless.
I fully recognise and understand that the key priority is to provide satisfactory long-term accommodation. I stress that what the Government have done in legislative and particularly financial terms provides a basis for expansion in the public sector of the necessary accommodation for


the single homeless. I refer particularly to what is being done through the Housing Corporation and the hostels' initiative. I shall come to local authorities.
The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North was dismissive of what we have done. I do not know whether he intended to be so. We have made a substantial increase in expenditure on hostels which will be translated into a substantial rise in the number of bed spaces in hostel accommodation for various groups, including single people. We are carrying out the first major expansion in the building of modern hostels for many years.
In 1981–82 we made a specific allocation to the Housing Corporation for the first time for hostel provision totalling £12 million. For 1982–83 the total hostel provision within the corporation's programme has been increased to £18 million. The impetus behind the hostels' initiative is becoming evident in the number of bed spaces approved by the Housing Corporation. In 1979–80 the Housing Corporation approved 1,295 bed spaces in England. In 1981–82 the number was 1,575, and in 1982–83 it aims to approve over 3,000. In effect, we shall have more than doubled the rate of approvals for hostel bed spaces in three years, which will benefit a considerable number of single people.
I refer the House to the detailed answer that I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving) on 20 November. I detailed the legislative and administrative steps that we have taken to improve hostel conditions. I attached a detailed list of approvals of new hostel bed spaces. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar and the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North both spoke of the great need to change the flavour and general associations of hostel accommodation and to get away from the big turn-of-the-century barracks built to house several hundred or even over a thousand people in impersonal dormitory accommodation. Hon. Members will see from my answer that in the approvals given the number of bed spaces in almost every case is below 100. In virtually every case the number is only 20 or 30.
That also deals with the important point made by the hon. Gentleman about the unhappy feeling of potential employers about the addresses of the big hostels. I share his regret that an employer should be prejudiced against an applicant because of his address. I hope that all employers take people entirely on their merits and their circumstances.
The new detailed list of hostel schemes that have been approved shows that they are all being carried out by housing associations. I imagine that when people from this sort of accommodation go to employers they will see housing association addresses, attached to which there can be no stigma, and that should override that problem.
We are moving into a quite new phase of hostel building both in terms of the extent of the hostel building programme and in terms of the type of accommodation being constructed. We are going in for much smaller units where there can be more intensive management and greater personal care, with nothing like the same degree of informality and sometimes the sense of rootlessness that is experienced in some of the very large turn-of-the-century buildings. That again will be extremely beneficial to those concerned.
I mention the very important announcement made by my hon. Friend the then Under-Secretary of State for Social Security on 20 November about Camberwell. It is a major issue that we have had to deal with in London.
There has been a very satisfactory outcome with my Department and the DHSS working together to provide not only the capital funding for a substantial programme of hostel bed spaces to replace Camberwell but also the revenue funding. The House will know that it is the revenue funding of hostel projects which has been every bit as difficult as the capital funding. That, too, will provide us with nearly 1,000 additional hostel bed spaces in London over the next few years. We have done a great deal to improve the financial provision and the general thrust of activity on the hostel side.
I understand that many homeless people wish to get away from hostels and the very close sharing arrangement, especially the communal facilities, associated with hostel accommodation. Here, too, we are making an important change in the priorities that we are asking the Housing Corporation to adopt as from the next financial year 1982–83.
It is clear, as the report confirms, that it is not realistic to expect many people who are now single and homeless to move straight from the present hostel environment into totally independent, self-contained accommodation. There is a real need to create a halfway house, and that is often referred to as "hostel move-on accommodation". We accept that entirely, and we have made specific provision in the Housing Corporation's programme to give priority to schemes for two specific groups. We have asked the corporation to allocate funds for new schemes in what is called the "other needs" part of its programme. The two priority groups cover the disabled and people who are moving on from hostels. We envisage creating over the next few years a reasonable quantity of accommodation designed to help people move out from the existing very unsatisfactory hostels into a halfway house between hostel accommodation and completely independent accommodation.
I want now to turn to the activities of the local authorities, although I shall return to the private sector presently, because I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar that, although a major contribution has to be made in the public sector both by local authorities and the housing associations to meet the needs of single homeless, we must not discount the possibility of some single homeless people being willing to buy their own homes or, if they cannot buy outright immediately, to use one of our intermediate forms of tenure such as shared ownership. That possibility should not be ignored, although I accept that for a lot of the members of this group the requirement is for rented accommodation.
Local authorities need to look very rigorously at whether they can do more with their existing stock and by adding to that stock special types of newly built accommodation, on which I shall make some proposals in a moment.
My hon. Friend rightly suggested that we could help to get very much better use of some of the difficult-to-let local authority accommodation by utilising it for single people. In that respect I think that he is entirely correct. It is one of the central housing problems that we face and we are likely to face it for many years to come.
We face a mounting difficulty of getting acceptability—particularly as family accommodation—for much of the accommodation that we now have in the public sector. We get regular returns from local authorities as to the amount of stock that they regard as


being difficult to let. It is a matter of real concern that local authorities, in their last housing investment programme returns, estimated that there were about 250,000 local authority dwellings—no distinction was made between houses and flats—that were in the difficult-to-let category. Local authorities should look very rigorously at the possibility of using that accommodation, not perhaps on a family basis but for single people.
Coupled with the difficult-to-let stock, I must stress that there are still significant numbers of local authority dwellings which have been vacant over a long period. The last HIP returns showed that there were about 24,000 local authority dwellings in England which had been vacant for more than a year. That is a significant total.
I draw the attention of the House to the answer I gave to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Proctor), who asked me to state the local authorities in England which had more than 500 council dwellings empty for more than a year. The 14 authorities concerned were given in the answer that I gave to him on 10 March 1982.
We have a significant problem with difficult-to-let stock and a sizeable number of local authority dwellings which have been vacant over a considerable period. There is real scope for local authorities to utilise them for the benefit of single people. This is not just theorising, and I should like to refer specifically to a few authorities which have made the sort of conversion process to which I refer.
I understand that in Blackburn the council has successfully turned unpopular three-bedroom and four-bedroom flats on a deck access estate into furnised bed-sitters with shared bathrooms and kitchen. I have not seen that scheme but I understand that it has proved to be very popular with students, nurses and other single people.
In Liverpool there are two tower blocks that were previously thought to be very hard to let. They had been taken over by the polytechnic, improved and let to students. The polytechnic manages the block itself, providing 24-hour entrance security and a resident caretaker. I understand that today all the flats are let and are occupied.
There is a need to do that kind of thing in the smaller towns and cities as well. For example, in Reading a block of maisonettes that has suffered from condensation problems has been successfully improved and converted, with the specific needs of working age single persons and couples in mind. When the scheme is completed there will be 29 two-person flats and 29 bed-sitters in the block, all self-contained. That illustrates the scope available to local authorities to use empty and difficult-to-let accommodation for the single. I tell the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North that we would regard that as being a perfectly valid and, indeed, useful form of housing capital expenditure. If authorities wish to make use of their HIP funds in that way, they should highlight the fact in the HIP bids and the HIP strategy statements that they make to us. It will then be a part of the overall consideration that we give to a local authority in making its HIP allocation.
Local authorities should also use to the full the important new flexibility that we have given them in relation to the types of new houses and flats that we will subsidise, and consider what is available from private sector house builders. We made a beneficial and helpful change on 1 April last year by breaking free from the cost

yardstick and the Parker Moms system. That enables a local authority to work out for itself the sort of accommodation best suited to single people and the single homeless. It will probably be property for rent and local authorities can go in for the small units available from private house builders and let them furnished or unfurnished.
Let me illustrate how the private building industry can produce a wide range of choice for local authorities if they wish to commission the construction of cluster blocks of flats and maisonettes to meet the needs of single people. In January this year the House-Builders Federation issued a press release listing all the house builders in England that are offering single person units. The builders would build them for sale, but it would be open to a local authority to approach any company to build such accommodation for rent.
A total of 33 builders were listed as building accommodation specially designed for single people. Local authorities should look at the options and the potential cost and consider whether they should supplement their existing rented stock with a limited supply of single-person units.
In many cases, local authorities will want to use such accommodation for rented purposes, but they should be alive to the fact that it is low-cost accommodation. I have seen such accommodation on sale for about £15,000—it may be slighter higher in London and the South-East. Such properties consist of a bedsitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom and it is attainable off the shelf at competitive prices from various builders. Even those on relatively low incomes may be able to get a mortgage for such properties.
Property for single people is available not only in the North or the Midlands. Single-person maisonettes were among the houses for sale at Beckton in the London Docklands. With the benefit of a mortgage subsidy that the builder is giving in the first year, those maisonettes were available for a net-of-tax cost of £27 a week.
Builders are trying to go down the market and provide economic accommodation for single people. For those who cannot afford to buy immediately, there is shared ownership a part-rent, part-ownership option, with a right to buy the balance later.
I ask authorities to look seriously at the range of flats and maisonettes that are available from private sector house builders and to consider whether they should supplement their housing stocks with clusters of such accommodation. In the current year many authorities will underspend on housing and we have made a significant increase of 6 per cent. in real terms in local authority housing capital provision for next year. Local authorities have the resources to make an investment in such accommodation if they choose.
I congratulate warmly my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar on initiating the debate. It is valuable to have the opportunity to consider this important report. I hope that it will be widely studied by local authorities. It contains some important suggestions for action.
The Government urge local authorities to make full use of existing capital allocations and capital receipts. We urge them to make full use of the legislative flexibility that we have given them for short-term rented accommodation. We also urge them to make full use of the new range of accommodation becoming available through the Housing Corporation by way of housing associations constructing


special hostel accommodation for the single homeless, and by private house builders who are providing a new range of house types which will be particularly valuable to single people.
I thank my hon. Friend for initiating the debate and congratulate him on the way in which he spoke.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House takes note of the recommendations of the report 'Single and Homeless'; and welcomes the report as valuable research on which to base future policy.

Water Charges (Wales)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Goodlad.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): As the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Sir R. Fairgrieve) is not present, I accept the motion.

Mr. Dafydd Wigley: I am glad of this opportunity to raise on the Adjournment the question of water charges in Wales, in view of the complete failure of the Welsh Office to develop acceptable policy in this matter or to explain its position adequately at Welsh Question Time on successive occasions. In a short debate such as this it will be impossible to go into all the questions that arise from this most emotive of subjects. It is emotive because for year after year the Welsh water ratepayers—whether domestic or commercial, whether in a private house or a council house—have had to pay substantially greater water charges than those in comparable circumstances in England. The failure of successive Governments, both Conservative and Labour, to provide an adequate solution has led to a position today where thousands of water ratepayers are saying "Enough is enough" and are refusing to pay their water rates for 1982–83.
It is a rebellion about what is in essence a system of taxation, about over-taxation, and about taxation without representation. It therefore bears all the hallmarks of a modern-day Boston tea party.
I make it clear from the outset that although there may be some criticisms of aspects of the Welsh water authority's administration, I do not regard that as the prime cause of our high water rates in Wales. Our argument is not so much with the authority as with the system laid down by the Water Act 1973, with the way in which successive Secretaries of State for Wales have implemented that system, and with the failing of the present incumbents of the Welsh Office to act even within the limitations of the present system, to ensure equitable charges for water services in Wales.
The level of water charges in Wales is a scandal. Both domestic and commercial ratepayers in Wales down the years have suffered a raw deal when it comes to water charges. The position today can be summed up quite briefly. During the current financial year Welsh water ratepayers have to pay 30·03p in the pound of equated rateable value, compared to 14·22p in the pound in the Severn-Trent area and 17·1p in the pound in the North-West area. The charge for metered water for industry and commerce is 100p in the pound in Wales for the current year, compared to 94p in the pound in the Severn-Trent area and 88p in the pound in North-West England. The irony is that Severn-Trent and the North-West of England get a large proportion of their water from Wales.
The charges this year, 1981–82, are higher as a deliberate result of Government policy. The Conservative Government, by rescinding the Water Charges Equalisation Act 1977 last year, have ended the partial equalisation of water charges that had some limited benefit for Wales. That partial equalisation was inadequate but it was better than nothing. With the deliberate ending of that scheme—which the Labour Government brought forward in 1976 after years of campaigning by Plaid Cymru—by


the Tory Government, Wales must pay £3 million more for its water this year while areas of England, whose charges are lower than those in Wales, must pay £3 million less. That is partly the cause of the large discrepancies this year.
Next month, a new financial year opens. We in Wales are now receiving our water bills for the coming year. Those show an increase of 18·3 per cent. in the domestic water rate. The comparable increase in the Severn-Trent area is only 7·4 per cent. and in the North-West is only 9·7 per cent. So our already iniquitous charges are to be further increased way beyond the level of inflation. The gap between what we must pay and what the people of Birmingham must pay widens by a further 11 per cent.
Next year Welsh households will have to pay, on average, a water bill of £79·08. That will compare with £59·86 in North-West England, and £62·44 in the Severn-Trent area. In other words, the average paid in Wales is 32 per cent. higher than that in North-West England, which gets much of its water from Wales.
I wish to put it to the Minister in no uncertain terms that the people of Wales have had enough of this grotesque mistreatment. They have been driven beyond the point of patience, tolerance and forbearance. There is now a water rate rebellion in Wales on a massive scale, supported by people in all parts of the Welsh water authority area. The revolt is only just beginning. It is supported by local councils, trade unions, small business men, and the disabled and pensioners' organisations in an unprecendented unity of purpose. The campaign was launched only three weeks ago. If it continues to grow at its present rate, it will compare with the Rebecca rebellions of the last century against the iniquity of the toll gates. I warn the Welsh Office that this rebellion is not one that it can ignore or laugh off. It will do so at its peril. The Welsh people now expect the Welsh Office to take unto itself a new role, and for once to act as the defender of Welsh interests instead of the institutional apologia for London policy in Wales.
I wish to deal with one red herring that is constantly being conjured up by those opposed to fair play for Wales in regard to water charges. We are told that the actual rate poundage—the pence in the pound on rateable value paid by Welsh householders compared to English householders—is an unfair basis of comparison. We are told that because the standard of housing is lower in Wales the average charges falling on a family budget are not so different.
I wish to dispose of that argument in two ways. First, I make it quite clear that the basis of rateable value is identical in both Wales and England. The rateable value of a house is determined by the same principles in Wales as in England. A family house in Wales identical in size, perspective and environment to a house in England will have near enough the same rateable value. Unfortunately, the age and quality of the housing stock in Wales is much poorer than in England. Forty-one per cent. of our houses were built before 1919 compared with 29 per cent. in England. Nine per cent. of Welsh houses are declared to be unfit for habitation, compared with 5 per cent. in England. That is a result of historical social and economic factors, not least being the substantially lower average per capita income of Wales compared to England.
The only fair comparison—this was conceded by the Water authority spokesman in a recent letter in Y Cymro

—is the water bill faced by an identical family living in identical houses in the two countries. Since the basis of rateable value is the same the comparison rests on the rate poundage charged. For the current year the unmeasured water supply average equated rate poundage in Wales is 30·03p in the pound, compared with 14·22p in the pound in the Severn-Trent water authority and 9·08p in the pound in the Thames area. Those figures are based on a Parliamentary answer given on 21 May by the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment.
In other words, when we compare like with like—the valid comparison—Welsh people face water charges twice the level of people in Birmingham and three times the level of people in London. It adds insult to injury to tell the Welsh people that, because they are on lower incomes and cannot afford as luxurious houses as those in the London area, their average water bills are not too bad. In relation to the resources and their disposable income, the burden of water rate is appreciably higher in Wales. The people of Wales know that and no amount of jiggery-pokery with figures by the Welsh Office will change that reality.
This latest increase in the price of water in Wales is the straw that breaks the camel's back. We have protested before. We have written letters, tabled questions, made speeches. Nothing has happened.
That is why, earlier this month, Plaid Cymru launched a campaign of civil disobedience on this issue. I returned my water bill for next year—a bill of £267 which is likely to be higher than my electricity bill for the year—to the Welsh Water Authority telling it that I have no intention of paying it until a more reasonable level of water charges is put before the people of Wales. Hundreds of people, to my knowledge, have subsequently joined the campaign. Whole villages have given their support. Community councils have urged the people of their area to withhold their bills. I have had letters of support from the old and the young, from the unemployed and from business men, from Gwent and from Gwynedd. A redundant steelworker from Newport, whose water bill for next year is £139, wrote me as follows:
It is to be hoped that more and more people will withhold payment of these water rates because I am sure that a massive response throughout Wales is the only way to get results.
Almost all the residents of the private estate on which he lives have signed a declaration that they intend to withhold their water rate payment.
The Wales Council for the Disabled has also written:
These increases can only serve to further erode the very low income of many disabled people in Wales … Disabled people in Wales will share your concern and support your campaign to introduce a more equitable system of charges for water rates in the future.
I draw to the Minister's attention the case of a disabled lady pensioner, over 90 years old, paying £57 a year water rates—more than £1 per week. She wrote as follows:
It really is too bad at my age, over 90 years, to charge that ridiculous amount when I use very little water. First of all I am disabled and unable to go into a bath so the nurse gives me a blanket bath once a week and I have a 'face and hand wash' daily. The chain in the toilet is pulled once a day when the commode is emptied. I don't apply for supplementary benefit. I try and manage on my retirement pension.
I draw the Minister's attention also to a constituent of mine living at Cae Bold, Caenarvon. She lives by herself in a one-bedroom flat and is dependent on her pension. She has just received a water bill for £127·62. I know That I can quote in Welsh from a letter from a constituent, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I shall do so. My constituent writes:


Rwyf mewn helbul garw yn trio byw yn y flat yma ac wedi cael bil dwr am £127·62. Mae'n amhosibl i mi ei dalu. Gyrrais y bil dwr i'r Social Security pan gefais ef bythefnos yn ol, and ei yrru'n ol a wnaethant a dim dimau ar ei gyfer … £19 yr wythnos sydd gennyf ar ol talu rhent a thrydan. Does gennyfbron ddim i brynu bwyd; mae'n wir ddifrifol arnaf. Nid wyf yn gwybod beth wnaf efo'r bil dwr yma.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Order.

Mr. Wigley: I was quoting, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have come to the end of my quotation.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Indeed, but the hon. Gentleman should give us the English interpretation.

Mr. Wigley: Yes, Mr. Deputy Speaker. At the risk of continuing a little longer, I shall do so. I realise that there is a little more time than usual for this debate. My constituent wrote as follows:
I am in considerable difficulties trying to live in this flat and having received a water bill for £127·62. It is impossible for me to pay it. I sent the bill to the social security office when I received it a fortnight ago but they sent it back and contributed not a halfpenny towards it … £19 a week is all I have after paying my rent and electricity charges. I have hardly enough to buy food. It is truly difficult for me. I do know what I can do with this water bill.
That case sums up the iniquity of the present system in which no rate rebates can paid for water rates and in which the charges are now out of people's reach. It highlights an aspect of the problem that is of general application, not just in Wales—the fact that, whereas a pensioner or disabled person, or a person on very low income, can obtain a rebate on his general rates, no rebate whatsoever is payable on his water rate. As a result, we have the ridiculous position of a widowed pensioner living by herself paying the same water rates as the house next door where there may be four or five persons earning substantial wages. The manifest unfairness of this has been pointed out time after time, but nothing has been done about it. This Government, like their Labour predecessors, have ignored this scandalous travesty of justice.
I have worked out the cost of water to a single pensioner living by himself or herself, assuming a water bill of £100 a year. It has been calculated that a person, on average, uses about 30 gallons of water a day—a figure which was quoted by the last Government. About 11 gallons are used for washing and bathing, and about 11 gallons for toilet purposes. The total annual usage for such a person is therefore about 10,000 gallons, which means that the widow or widower, after allowing for sewerage charges, is still paying in excess of £5 per 1,000 gallons for the water consumed. This compares with £1 per 1,000 gallons for metered industrial consumers, and only 4·3p per 1,000 gallons paid by the Severn-Trent water authority for the water that it takes from Wales. In other words, the widow pays 100 times more for the water that she uses than the Severn-Trent authority pays. And I cannot for the life of me see how this falls within the spirit or the letter of section 30 of the Water Act 1973.

The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wyn Roberts): When the hon. Gentleman talks about the charges paid by commercial users, has he reckoned with the standing charge in calculating those figures? Is he not aware that the 4·3p payable by the Severn-Trent water authority is for untreated, unpiped water?

Mr. Wigley: I accept that there are standing charges. There are standing charges for more domestic and

industrial users. My bill this year had an £11 standing charge, which I had to pay even if I used no water. So the standing charges hit both sides. I accept that some cost is involved in converting the water extracted by the Severn-Trent water authority to the water that comes out of the pipes. None the less, a range of 100 times the price that is paid, in my view, seems way beyond what is said in section 30(5) of the Water Act 1973, namely,
it shall be the duty of every water authority to take such steps as will ensure that, as from a date not later than 1st April 1981, their charges are such as not to show undue preference to, or discriminate unduly against, any class of persons".
I contend that there is discrimination here, and it works particularly hard against pensioners and single people living by themselves on low incomes.
I quoted the case of a 90-year-old lady from Biwmaris in Anglesey. It is hardly surprising that she is up in arms about the water bill. In 1973–74, the unadjusted water rate in Anglesey was 3·4p in the pound. The figure for 1982–83, excluding fixed charges, is 28p in the pound—an increase of over 800 per cent. in less than a decade. The Minister may well look sheepish as he prepares to defend the indefensible.
Another equally ridiculous example that has come to my attention is of a shop in Caernarvon, which has to pay £800 per year in water rates. Its only use of water is for a toilet used four or five times a day, and for a wash basin. The burden of water rates on small businesses such as this is absolutely crippling and totally unfair. The Government had promised an alleviation of the water rates on small businesses. What is happening in Wales in terms of water rates is the exact opposite.
This is not a new problem. In 1975, the Daniel Committee, which had been set up in response to strong feelings about high water charges in Wales, recommended:
Early action should be taken to reduce the difference in average water charges between the Welsh National Water Development Authority and other authorities.
To this end, the Daniel report called for legislation to be introduced as soon as possible, either to allow the commercial pricing of water taken from Wales for use elsewhere, or to operate a levy and subsidy system that would limit price fluctuations to plus or minus 10 per cent. at most. As an interim measure, Daniel recommended an Exchequer subsidy. In practice, this report led to the Water Charges Equalisation Act 1976, which, although it brought only limited benefit to Wales with some £3 million per annum, succeeded in achieving none of the recommendations of the Daniel report.
That brings me to another aspect of the problem—the performance of the Welsh water authority over the past decade since it came into existence. The present structure of the water industry was set up by the Conservative Government of 1970–74. It was a previous Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. and learned Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Thomas), who was in charge when the Welsh water authority set its first budget. I visited Brecon at that time, early in 1974. I have no doubt whatsoever that some fundamental mistakes were made in the way in which that first budget was put together, and that we have been living with the consequences of those mistakes ever since. Quite frankly, the first chairman of the authority and the former Secretary of State for Wales must carry a lot of the responsibility for the way in which the new water authority sets its spending patterns. The present Secretary of State for Wales complains about


waste and inefficiency. If there is such waste—and no doubt examples can be quoted—it must be rooted out. However, the buck must rest largely on the desk of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors and himself, particularly the right hon. and learned Member for Hendon, South, for the way in which the whole show got off on the wrong foot. We may also well ask why it has taken three years for the Government to act on the matter.
There are many people in Wales who feel that the way in which the Secretary of State has tried to put the blame for the water charges on to members of the water authority is extremely distasteful. The responsibility for ongoing inefficiency must ultimately rest with the Secretary of State. It is to him, not to any democratically elected body, that the water authority is answerable, and he must carry the can for its failings. Having said that, the proportion of the water charge which can be explained by such inefficiencies is probably no more than 3 or 4 per cent. and falls a long way short of explaining the high water charges in Wales.
I should also like to say how regrettable it is for the Secretary of State to imply, as he has done recently, and as has been interpreted by the press, that there is any question as to the effectiveness of the water authority's retiring chairman, Dr. Haydn Rees. I have little doubt that Dr. Rees has done as good a job as was possible, given the structure that he inherited from his predecessor, and that he had to work within constraints where there was no leadership whatsoever from the Welsh Office on vital policy matters.
I only hope that the new chairman, Mr. John Elfed Jones, will get more positive support from the Welsh Office in his daunting task. His appointment is one that we welcome and we wish him well. However, he will be powerless unless the Welsh Office ensures that there is proper agreement with the Severn-Trent water authority and the North-West water authority in respect of charges. It is our belief, however, that the Welsh water authority will not be properly answerable until it becomes a democratically elected body that is responsible to the Welsh public. At present, the water ratepayers do not know to whom to turn with their problem, since neither district nor county councils have direct responsibility and since very often the public have no idea as to who are the nominated authority members within their areas. It is truly a position of taxation without representation, and the Welsh water ratepayers are in the same mood today as was seen at the Boston tea party 200 years ago. The new structure of the Welsh water authority that is due to come into force next week is no answer to the problem and, if authority meetings in future are to be in secret behind locked doors, the problem will worsen rather than improve.
The result of the 1973 bureaucratic reorganisation in Wales, with no democratic accountability, is in stark contrast to the position in Scotland, which was not covered by the 1973 Act. The reorganisation in Scotland was the reverse of the England and Wales pattern, with local authorities being given full powers in relation to water supply, sewerage and drainage.
The result has been far better control over the cost of water in Scotland, and the charge in terms of rate poundage range between 7p in the pound in Fife to 15p in the Highlands area. This compares with the charge of over

30p in the pound in Wales. That puts paid to the hoary old argument that the scattered, depopulated nature of Wales is the cause of higher charges. In fact, the average charge per household in Scotland is £23, compared to £67 in Wales.
I understand that part of the reason that the water charges and sewerage charges are lower in Scotland than in Wales is that in Scotland they still attract rate support grant, whereas in Wales they do not. That is a blatant unfairness and discrimination against Wales, and in effect the Welsh taxpayer is paying a subsidy towards Scottish water rates as well as bearing the full cost of his own water rates. I expect the Minister to say quite clearly why that discrepancy between Wales and Scotland has been allowed to persist.
This local authority-based democratic control also gives a structure for integrated planning and resource management, and gives the Scottish people direct representation in the authorities which manage their water. There are many lessons for Wales from Scotland, and Plaid Cymru would like to see the Scottish model of accountability introduced in Wales.
The Severn-Trent water authority and the North-West water authority have been allowed to run rings around the Welsh water authority during recent years. An example of the contempt in which they hold the Welsh water authority is the fiasco relating to the water installations located in the Welsh water authority area. In 1974 the Welsh water authority came in for criticism because capital works in Wales were to be leased to Severn-Trent for a peppercorn rent of 5p per annum. That agreement was never concluded, and attempts to secure a better agreement have foundered. For eight years, no rent has been paid by Severn-Trent to the Welsh water authority. In the words of Mr. Ted Meredith, finance director of the Welsh water authority:
For one reason or another, an agreement has never been settled.
Where on earth has the Welsh Office been in relation to this dispute for the past eight years? Presumably it preferred an easy life to confronting the Department of the Environment in order to force the issue.
That leads to the similar lack of urgency shown by the Welsh Office during the recent months on the question of making additional charges on Severn-Trent and the North-West England authorities for water that they get from Wales.
Last year, during the passage of the Water Bill, the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts), made it clear that the Welsh water authority does have the power to make additional charges to authorities that get their water from Wales. I refer him to the debate on 19 February 1981, cols 469–471, and to columns 469 to 471 of the Official Report. In the light of that clarification of its powers, the Welsh water authority made proposals on 3 August 1981 to Severn-Trent for a new and higher scale of payments for the water that it gets from Wales. On 25 September, Severn-Trent notified the Welsh water authority of its refusal to pay the new charges. On 9 October, the North-West similarly refused to pay higher charges. On 15 October, the Welsh water authority formally asked the Welsh Office to use its powers under the schedules in the Water Act 1973 to resolve the difficulty. The Welsh Office made no response until 16 February 1982—the day after I raised the issue at Welsh Question Time—and then the Welsh Office merely


asked for more details rather than giving a decision on the dispute. The Welsh water authority gave the required information on 16 March. There has still not been a decision and one is unlikely, apparently, before May. As a result, next year's water charges have had to be based on the assumption that no further payment will be made by Severn-Trent.
I must ask the Under-Secretary of State why it took four months for the Welsh Office to ask relevant questions of Severn-Trent and the Welsh water authority. Since the Water Act has been on the statute book for nine years, why on earth has no procedure to deal with such a dispute been drawn up? I put it to the Minister that his Department's culpable negligence on this matter has cost the Welsh water ratepayer millions of pounds for the coming year.
I shall now say a few words about the principle of charging for water which Plaid Cymru advocates as an answer to the problem currently facing the Welsh water ratepayer. It would appear that there are four courses open to the Government. The first is that nothing is done, and that we in Wales continue to suffer substantially higher charges. That course is just not acceptable, and if the Government try to sit it out there will be an escalating rate strike in Wales which will reduce the finances of the water authority to chaos.
The second course of action is that there should be a direct Government subsidy to reduce charges in Wales. Successive Governments have come out against that, and the Daniel report foresaw it as only an interim and short-term course of action pending a more acceptable long-term solution. If this Government are concerned with establishing a system which minimises waste and inefficiency, the introduction of a subsidy may not appeal to them, at least on anything more than a short-term basis.
The third course would entail full equalisation of charges so that there is one uniform charge for the whole of Britain. That clearly would be advantageous to Welsh water ratepayers, but when the Labour Government considered that in 1975–76 they shied off from following that course because of the reaction in other parts of England. The partial equalisation that was introduced in 1976 barely went a quarter of the way towards equalisation. Furthermore, the present Government have made it quite clear that they are out of sympathy with that proposal, and regard it as unacceptable if there is to be a drive towards a more efficient water industry. While we in Plaid Cymru can see that within the present political structures, it offers greater fair play than the status quo, it does not offer Wales the opportunity to get proper recompense for the development of our own natural resources, nor does it give any challenge to the Welsh water authority to improve its performance.
That leaves the fourth option—which we advocate—that the Welsh water authority should be entitled to sell water piped or abstracted from rivers controlled by reservoirs in Wales. We regard this as a reasonable proposal, so that Wales gets some recompense for the land that has been lost in providing the reservoirs, and for suffering the rainfall which fills them. Water is a valuable raw material. The fact that it is a replenishable commodity, as opposed to a depleting one, in no way weakens that argument. Hydro-electricity is a replenishing commodity—but no one would expect a country to give it away free of charge.
On this matter I believe that I am knocking on an open door, since the Under-Secretary of State indicated as long

ago as 1977 that he favoured the solution. If I can refresh his memory, he said in the Standing Committee on the Water Charges Equalisation Bill on 24 February:
What I propose in the amendments is that there should be a more commercial pricing of water transfers…I suggest that the price should be enough to ensure that the average price of water to Welsh consumers is no different from the average price of water to consumers in Severn-Trent and the North-West.
He added that
water is a scarce resource. Why should the areas that have it in abundance, and have very little else in abundance…not regard water as a saleable commodity."— [Official Report, Standing Committee B, 24 February 1977; c. 393–5.]
I could hardly have put the argument better myself. I assume that the hon. Gentleman has not changed his mind over the last five years. Certainly the experience of Wales, now that equalisation has been abandoned, shrieks out for some new system.
We, in Plaid Cymru, propose that a charge of 25 pence per 1,000 gallons be made on all the water that is obtained from Wales. For that purpose, we would want the Welsh water authority to have its boundaries redrawn so as to be coterminous with Wales—to include Montgomeryshire and not Herefordshire. Such a charge, applied to all water supplies, whether piped or abstracted, would give the Welsh water authority an extra income of some £40 million a year. We propose that half of that should he used to reduce the water charges, giving an effective reduction of 20 per cent. in Welsh water rates. We would propose that the other £20 million be used to increase investment in the Welsh economy, not least in improving water supplies and modern sewerage systems—work which could provide employment for an extra 2,000 people from among the legion of unemployed in Wales.
Our proposals are not unrealistic. On the present year's figures, the domestic rate in Wales would be immediately reduced from an average of £67 per household a year to £56, while the effect on Severn-Trent would be an increase from £57 to £64. For the North-West, it would mean an increase from £54 to £57. That is virtually in line with what the hon. Member for Conway proposed in 1977. There would be similar changes in the metered charges.
We therefore urge that this course of action be taken by the Welsh Office and that it insist that Severn-Trent and the North-West meet these reasonable demands. I realise that it would be difficult to bill them in time to be effective for the year 1982–83, and therefore, in view of the fact that it is the Welsh Office's delay that has made this impossible, we propose a once-off grant of £20 million to the Welsh water authority for the coming year in order to facilitate an immediate reduction of water rates in Wales.
Water is a vital raw material—an economic resource without which life cannot go on. It is a resource which we have in relative abundance in Wales. We suffer the higher rainfall on our mountains and many of our valleys have been dammed to provide reservoirs for the conurbations of the Midlands and North-West England. In some instances, whole villages have been uprooted to allow reservoirs to be built for English cities. The experience of Capel Celyn in Merioneth, 20 years ago, typifies the exploitation that took place. The people of that village did not want their valley doomed or drowned. The 36 Welsh MPs—for once—stood together in their opposition to it. But Capel Celyn was drowned despite the protestations of the whole of Wales. The voice of Wales was drowned at Westminster when the interests of the city of Liverpool were at stake.
The same thing happened with the Clywedog reservoir. My parents-in-law used to farm a beautiful corner of that valley. It is now a large, dark artificial lake, meeting the economic needs and the well-being of Birmingham. It is little wonder that Wales feels very strongly on this matter.
There is one word for what we have suffered in Wales on the water issue. That word is "exploitation". It is not the first time that Wales has suffered from the exploitation of her natural resources. The pock-marked faces of the coal mining valleys of South Wales tell the same old story. It is the people who now reside in those valleys after the coal has gone who have to cope with the residual mess—the despoliation, the industrial disease, and the environmental legacy of systematic exploitation by a system which took the wealth elsewhere. For the coal of Glamorgan, read the slate of Gwynedd. It happened because we allowed it to happen. It is exploitation that is happening today with that most vital of natural resources—water. But it will not happen any more. Either through, or despite, the machinery of government, this system of control and charging for Welsh water resources will end. Whether the Welsh Office, or its big brother, the Department of the Environment, likes it or not, there will be change. The bells that chimed beneath the water of Wales ring out a message that will be heard. The only question is when, by whom, and how much suffering must there be before this change is achieved.
My party does not believe that Westminster or any London Government have it within their capability to act against this exploitation of my country. They have neither the will nor the way. Governments in London will only concede when they are forced to it by the people of Wales. "Trech gwlad nac arglwydd". Why we have to fight every single issue, like the water saga, one at a time, time after time, beats me when we could with our own Government have a systematic control over our own natural resources and manage them in the interests of the people of Wales rather than for the financial benefit of others.
The only certain solution to our problem of water charges in Wales, as with so many of our other problems, is the achievement of an independent Welsh State whose remit is to serve the whole of the Welsh people. This Tory Government will only fiddle at the fringes of the problem of water charges in Wales, and the Government's response today as always will be mean, prevaricating, and

sanctimonious. If no solution is on the table in the Minister's response—and I expect none, knowing this Government—then I call upon each and every water ratepayer in Wales to withhold his payment from now on and to continue to refuse to pay until Wales gets justice on this issue.

The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wyn Roberts): The hon. Member for Caernarvon—

It being half-past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Orders of the Day — FIREARMS BILL

Read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

Orders of the Day — SUCCESSION TO THE CROWN BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday 2 April.

Orders of the Day — RIGHT OF REPLY IN THE MEDIA (No. 2) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday 23 April.

Mr. John Wheeler: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not incorrect that the hon. Gentleman promoting this Bill is not here today and does not appear to have given notice of the next date for Second Reading?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): The hon. Member can give instructions and, indeed, did so about the date of the Second Reading.

Orders of the Day — Water Charges (Wales)

Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: I was saying, before being so politely interrupted, that the hon. Member for Caernavon (Mr. Wigley) has produced a range of quixotic remedies for high water charges in Wales and for the ills of the Welsh water authority and, in particular, has come up with a magic cure-all formula in the form of a £40 million payment to the WWA by the Severn-Trent and North-West water authorities. He knows well that I am unable to go into the question of the "no profit—no loss" principle of charging for bulk transfers of water at a time when my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Wales and for the Environment have before them for determination the disputed proposals by the WWA to increase such charges. Our position in relation to this matter is quasi-judicial and it would be improper for me to be drawn into discussing the merits or the effects of the proposals.
What I can say is that a charge of 25p per 1,000 gallons of water abstracted in Wales might well result in the English water authorities developing alternative sources of supply leading to the waste of national resources and the loss of income to Wales. Wales does not have a monopoly of water and no way is it going to be possble to obtain more than the market will bear. The arguments, I am afraid, typify the somewhat muddled thinking of the members of Plaid Cymru and illustrate how their policies would militate against the interests of Wales.
I also rebut the hon. Gentleman's allegation—made by his party if reports in the press are correct—that the WVVA' s request for a determination of the dispute has "lain on my desk" since 15 October. Had the party had the courtesy to check with my Department, it would have discovered that we have been far from inactive in this matter. I must tell the House that, to my knowledge, this is the first occasion on which this provision of the Water Act 1945 has ever been invoked. No procedures are laid down in the Act and it has been necessary for my Department and the Department of the Environment to agree on a memorandum of procedure which fully safeguards the interests of the parties. This is a complex matter and a crucially important one. We have to ensure that the matter is ultimately decided in accordance with a fair and proper procedure. I can now say that not only has the procedure been agreed, but the Welsh Water Authority has submitted its evidence and the evidence of the other water authorities is awaited. I hope that a decision can be reached in May.
The hon. Gentleman made much of the abundance of water in Wales, but I continue to be amazed at his naive refusal to recognise that the water has to be stored, treated and distributed to a sparse population through some of the most difficult terrain in Britain. The per capita costs of distribution must inevitably be higher in those conditions. The average of population per kilometre of water main in England and Wales is 187 but in Wales alone it is only 136. In the Severn-Trent water authority area it is 192, which is above the average. Similarly, it is significantly higher in the North-West area. But I remind the House that the Welsh water authority has nevertheless contrived to keep its average household bill lower than those of some English water authorities. Other water authorities have higher combined charges for the coming year.
We have also heard a lot of the so-called equalisation scheme. I say "so-called" because we found that, far from equalising charges throughout England and Wales, the scheme caused the bills of 40 per cent. of consumers in England and Wales to move further away from the national average. The hon. Gentleman is right to quote my favourable remarks on the Bill when it passed through Parliament, but I had no idea then that its effects would eventually become as eccentric as they have become.
The equalisation scheme was based on the historic debts of water authorities, and would have had a steadily diminishing effect. The hon. Gentleman, like the Labour Party, makes much of equalisation, but the £2 million to £3 million that the authority might get as a result of the Act has to be related to its projected total running costs of more than £171 million for next year. It is these costs chat determine the charges.
We have considered whether some other form of equalisation scheme—for example, based on length of water main per head of population—could be introduced, but not one has been able to devise a scheme which would have a material effect on charges but which would not penalise efficiency and the careful use of resources and reward profligacy and inefficiency. One advantage of the present system is that each water authority can identify its costs and is responsible for taking action to reduce them in so far as that can be done while maintaining the desired level of service.
I turn to the question of the water bills received by consumers. I must refer to the reprehensible campaign being orchestrated by the hon. Member for Caernarvon and his party whereby consumers are being encouraged not to pay their water charges. I deplore, and I am sure that hon. Members will join with me in deploring, the incitement to abandon legal requirements.
Action of this kind, surely, is foolish in the extreme and is totally unworthy of a political party represented in the House. It may be easy to persuade some people not to pay their bills, but the majority know that it is wrong not to pay their bills. It is no good the hon. Member for Caernarvon trying to behave like a Hampden. I am afraid that Hampden's boots are a bit too big for him. What does he think would happen to the water authority finances if his campaign were to succeed? It would have no alternative but to borrow to make good the deficit. The resultant interest charges would add to the burden of the authority's debt and would have to be met by consumers generally. Hundreds of thousands of responsible consumers, many of them financially hard-pressed, would have to pay for the selfish and ill-considered gesture of a few. One should also take account of the strain and expense which this action, if it became widespread, would place on the authority's administrative and legal facilities.
I earnestly ask the hon. Member for Caernarvon although it is somewhat belated, in view of what he said, to give the reconstituted authority a fair chance to get to grips with the pressing task of cost cutting and improved performance, which is the key to lower charges, by a personal and public statement terminating this ridiculous campaign that he and his party have started. If he does not renounce it, I am sure that the people of Wales will have the good sense to reject his exhortations and abide by the law.

Mr. Wigley: In view of the Minister's anxiety to get out of the mess confronting the authority, will he not


consider the recommendation of the Daniel committee of an interim Exchequer grant to give the newly-constituted body an opportunity to find the savings that he believes to be there so that water charges can be kept down this year? In view of the way that the Gentleman castigates us for withholding our water charges, has he not considered that what we are doing is the same as what the Severn-Trent and the North-West authorities are doing in withholding their charges and not acceding to the bills being sent to them by the Welsh water authority?

Mr. Roberts: I do not accept that there is a parallel between the action of the hon. Gentleman and those others whom he is encouraging and the actions of the water authorities. They know and he knows that the matter is subject now to determination. When that determination is given, I am sure that the authorities concerned will abide by it.
The basis on which water bills are calculated remains a perennial problem which has confronted successive Governments, and I am the first to acknowledge that the present rateable value based system can give rise to anomalies. The problem has been to devise an alternative method which would be fair without at the same time giving rise to additional administrative costs which would wipe out any benefit to consumers.
In late 1980, the Government asked the National Water Council to carry out a consultation exercise and a review of the alternatives, which have included such suggestions as charging according to floor space or the number of residents in a property. In its report, the NWC concluded that the present system remained the fairest practical answer, provided that consumers were given the options of a metered supply. The Welsh water authority has been offering such an option since April 1981 and, since this could be advantageous particularly to the consumers who use little water but live in properties with a higher than average rateable value, it is surprising that the take-up has been relatively low, despite the fact that in most cases a meter can be installed within the building at modest cost to the consumer.
It is also worth emphasising that water charges are taken into account by the DHSS in calculating eligibility for supplementary benefit, and I urge hon. Members to bear this fact and the metering option in mind in dealing with constituents' inquiries. The hon. Gentleman referred to a particularly distressing case. Obviously I cannot comment on it, but he may see fit to follow it up.
So far, I have spoken mainly about charges and very little about costs. The consumer, of course, is concerned only with charges—with the bill he receives—but those in a responsible position in Government and in the water authority know that the only practical way, in the long run, to bring down charges is to contain costs, while maintaining a satisfactory level of service. This has been a major concern of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and myself since taking office.
We appreciate that the Welsh water authority has faced a difficult task. It inherited the functions of six river

authorities, 17 water undertakings and six joint sewerage boards and the sewerage functions of 183 local authorities. Some of those undertakings were first-class, but others had neglected their responsibilities. Moreover, water services were commonly subsidised. To weld those undertakings into a single all-purpose water authority was a major operation. I pay tribute to the work that has been done. I also pay tribute to the retiring chairman, Mr. Haydn Rees. But the work cannot be regarded either as successful or complete unless the unified organisation achieves results that the constituent undertakings could not achieve at less cost in real terms.
This is where we feel that the Welsh water authority is now falling behind what should be its goal. I drew attention to his in a speech that I made to the authority on 18 November 1980. Since then, the financial position of the authority has worsened.
It was clear that improvements could be made in the authority's efficiency and performance, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I became convinced that the right way to tackle the problem was to move away from the cumbersome local government-type structure of the authority and replace it with a small board with appropriate financial and management expertise.
I do not propose to dwell on the full background of the reorganisation of the authority. The consultation document published last July fully explored the issues and the proposals were fully debated in the House before the relevant order was made.
Subsequent events—including the report made by Price Waterhouse, which investigated the authority in November last, and the revelation of an estimated deficit of over £8 million on 31 March next, on top of the deficit of £845,000 carried forward from the previous year—have vindicated this decision and shown how necessary it was to press ahead with change, despite opposition from within this House and elsewhere.
The recent increase in charges, amounting to 18·4 per cent. for the average domestic property, was the result not of the financial target set by the Government, but of the simple need to balance the books.
The hon. Gentleman asked certain specific questions. He referred to the position in Scotland. I am not answerable for Scottish affairs but I can tell him that both this Government and the previous Labour Government have taken the view that water authorities should be self-sufficient industries without subsidies. No case to treat the industry differently from other service industries such as gas and electricity has been made and, of course, local authority rate support grant cannot be applied to water services in England and Wales.
The hon. Gentleman alleged that there was discrimination against the domestic user, because of the charges for bulk transfers. The WWA claims that there is no discrimination in favour of commercial users and that its charges are designed to ensure that each class of consumer pays his fair share.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for initiating the debate. It gave him the opportunity to air his views and me


the chance to present some of the Government's views. However, I urge him to reconsider his exhortation to the Welsh people not to pay their water rates. He knows that the path that he is treading is a dangerous one and is not, I think, suited to an hon. Member.
Furthermore, I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman's suggestion would ultimately benefit the people of Wales.

If his campaign is successful it will result in a further burden on water rate payers. I urge him and his colleagues to reconsider their suggestion.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at nine minutes to Three o'clock.